On 21 May 2002 at 10:51, 3dwavedave wrote:
> Hi Bo,
> Something you might give some thought is: Why, given Pirsig's
> assigning subjective, to social AND intellectual levels you are
> "obsessed" with mind being equated to just intellect? Why no concern
> for the "social" mind ? Our why is not "mind" the aggregate of the
> social/intellectual levels?
I haven't been thinking about much else since I first learned to know the
Quality Metaphysics.
However, me "obsessed" with mind being equated to intellect? Is that to
be understood that you see me WANTING it to be so regarded because
in the next sentence you ask why I have no concern for social "mind"?
All right, I guess you know me after all these years, namely that (by) the
usual definition of the intellectual level it introduces the SOM back into
the MOQ. No, dear Dave, it's the grossly neglected social "mind" which
is my real concern.
You know the som-moq harmonization where Pirsig says that two upper
levels corresponds to subjects (like you I take that to mean that they
also represent the subjective part of the SOM). This is OK, I clearly see
how an abstract quality enters existence at the bio/socio transition point
...and that intellectual value is an elevation of that abstraction to a new
height, but this is not how people regard the q-intellect. No, it's the
"thinking" realm exactly as in SOM, and Pirsig confirmed this by his
letter to Anthony McWatt where he equates intellect with mind.
Of course the creator of the MOQ don't for a moment lapse into SOM
(he added that the mind term should be avoided) but his definition of q-
intellect as a realm of ideas places the "continental divide" between
intellect and rest of the levels, which leads to a somification of the
MOQ: Ideas on one side and everything else at the other. One can hear
Plato applauding across the millennia.
I won't harp more on this, but hastily mention my SOLAQI for those who
repeatedly say they don't understand it. It says that q-intellect isn't any
"ascension" to ideas as such, rather to a very special idea: The one that
there is an OBJECTIVE , true, immutable reality impervious of what
people may think of it. This automatically creates a SUBJECTIVE
reality with all the negative prefixes. Voila. SOM!
But at this point I must haste to say that the annotation # 43 may be an
important change. Pirsig says:
> If we just say the intellect is the manipulation of language-derived
> symbols for experience these problems of excessive exclusion do not
> seem to occur.
This is something totally different. IMO as always.
Bo.
.......................
PS
I attach my (earlier) comment to Pirsig's annotation:
> This may be it! Yes, dammit! Look. In its social role the symbolic aspect of
> language wasn't "discovered". For instance, the name was intimately
> connected with the animal and if chanted - or painted (sign language) on
> the walls of the cave - it would bring it to their pits. Tens of thousands
> of years later the divide between the word (the symbol) and the actual
> thing became accentuated. This is what Pirsig calls "the increasing power
> of abstraction" in ZAMM which lead to the Greek thinkers and - eventually
> - SOM.
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