Hi all, Especially Wim:
Okay this is scary. I received the CD from Dan Glover a few weeks ago. It
contained a pdf file. Wim, I think you are telling me that my copy is
different from yours?
>
> Wim : Gary, what version of Lila's Child is it you are referring to with
'Lila's
> Child footnote 24'? I only have the Acrobat Reader (.pdf-file) version Dan
> sent me. It doesn't have footnotes but side notes that are not numbered
and
> the 24th one (on page 17 of 189) doesn't contain the text you quote.
>
> With friendly greetings,
>
> Wim
This is very strange. So, that we are all talking about the same thing.
Here is a copy of the relevant sections of Lila's Child: On my copy this is
from page 30, with the notes on page 44.
Magnus: In Lila, Pirsig describes the cell as two organs, the Dynamic and
fragile core and the protective shield. [19] They are organs [20] to the
cell-society. [21] Separately, they are inorganic; inorganic patterns of
value that can perform a function for a society are more valuable than other
inorganic patterns. This discrete criterion marks the division between
inorganic and organic patterns of value. [22]
Lila tends to give that impression. But I also think that the society of
robots I mentioned
in an earlier post is a society, i.e., social patterns of value. And they
can't reproduce
themselves, but they are organs anyway, to that society. This is also why I
never use the
word biology when I talk about organic patterns. [23]
If a society needs a chair, it must have a chair maker in case the chair
breaks. In that case,
the chair would be organic patterns of value, which should make us a little
more careful
about what we say about the organic level, i.e., not set it equal to what we
call "life" and
so on.
Social patterns use the function of its organs.
I think Lila only describes the different level's manifestations we can see
here on earth.
But they are only examples, not the definition. And since we are talking
about static
patterns, a definition should be possible.
Bodvar:
Yes that is exactly the way language/intellect developed, namely as a
survival tool for
society. This is in fact an important part of Pirsig's idea. He says so in
Lila (on top of
page 306, Bantam Press). "The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never
been to
discover an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent
fad. Its historical
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger and defeat
enemies. It can do
this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this purpose."
All value patterns started their "career" in the service of the parent
level, but gradually
they took off on their own and became a new value dimension. I don't think
that humans,
or even humanoids, ever have been below the social level threshold; even
apes live in
societies with strict rules and hierarchical structures. [24]
Magnus:
The languages our individual intellects are built upon are the language
provided by our
social patterns of value called our bodies. [25] It hit me when you wrote,
".in the
invention of language." How can a language, and now I mean a conventional
language
used to communicate thoughts, needs or warnings, be invented without
intellect?
Bodvar:
Here your "intellect as consciousness" surfaces again. Symbolic abstract
language is the
intellect! It is an intellectual activity to convey ideas/thoughts. Needs
and warnings may
be conveyed much more effectively by other signals by all animals. There
might be a
conference held on the needs of the hungry or on the threatening global
pollution, but that
takes place in the intellectual realm. Language is the birth of intellect,
but thousands upon thousands of years went by with
human beings capable of speech but still "submerged" in social values. Also,
you sensed
the extremely important effect that language had on creating the
subject/object division.
In a way, subject/object metaphysics itself can be viewed as the first
intellectual
manifestation! "Pursuit of rationality!" Just great! Objectivity (truth) was
the first "SOM
as intellect" breakout.
Yes, "in the brain," just as a novel can reside in magnetic orientations,
print, or in your
memory, but it is not the inorganic medium. The words are static
intellectual patterns.
Deep down we have a reptilian brain from that period of evolution, then a
limbic brain
common to all mammals, and so on upwards until the special human neocortex
and
frontal lobes. Of course, the intellectual patterns have a home in the
organic body in the
sense that every level builds upon the next lower, which builds upon the
next, etc. In that
capacity, all levels have a home in matter. Society and intellect have a
home in biology,
but intellect (of the MOQ!) does not emerge from organic body directly; it
grows from
society. Sorry for hammering so strongly on this point, but I have a feeling
that when
(Magnus) the term "organic body" is used here, it is really its inorganic
(matter) aspect
that creeps in.
And if the SOM's "consciousness produced by brain" notion enters, it messes
up the
MOQ completely. We are not in disagreement, as I see from the previous that
you have
written. Brain is a prerequisite for intellect even in an MOQ context, but
like a Jesuit, I
am out to exorcise every vestige of the Subject/Object "consciousness out of
matter" idea
(which leads into the age old blind alley of: everything is matter or
everything is mind).
The neural system had to reach a certain complexity for the Dynamic forces
to use it as a
vehicle for the intellectual development (just as matter had to have a
volatile element like
carbon for the forces to use as a vehicle of life). But, again, brain is
biology and matter
while intellect is all levels. The brain (Penrose's "tubulae" or whatever)
as "producer of
consciousness" is foreign to the MOQ. [26]
21. In Lila there is no such thing as a "cell-society." Organic patterns are
not social
patterns.
22. In Lila the criterion is strictly the presence of DNA in a
self-perpetuating pattern.
23. But biology is organic patterns. We must all use terms as they are
described in the
dictionary or we lose the ability to communicate with each other. That is
what happens
(to me) in the next sentence.
24. In Lila I never defined the intellectual level of the MOQ, since
everyone who is up to
reading Lila already knows what "intellectual" means. For purposes of MOQ
precision
let's say that the intellectual level is the same as mind. It is the
collection and
manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that stand for patterns of
experience.
25. Bodies are not social patterns.
26. Well said!
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