DMB,all
DMB said:
> Let's start with the first word many of us
> learn as children; "no". Even this is an abstraction. A pre-verbal infant
> could just scream and cry to express displeasure, but the ability to say
> "no" is distinctly different. Its a symbol. Its a phonetic representation of
> the little one's will. This is the very beginning of basic language. Its a
> symbolic act that is pretty clearly NOT intellectual.
3WD
That is unless that child's "no" is in response to your "distinction
between social level thinking and intellectual level thinking." In which
case the the following quotes from
Lila apply to her thinking .....
P
"Truth is an intellectual pattern of value"
"Truth is a species of good..."
DMB
> And the point is that
> Galileo's critic was using words, sentences and was otherwise engaged in
> using symbolic abstractions. He could speak and write about as well as
> anyone in that time, but it was not intellectual.....
> The difference between him and us is that he didn't have access to logic and
> rational thinking as we understand it today.
3WD
This is a common misinterpretation that shows up here time and time
again. We have overwhelming evidence of very high level of intellectual
"thinking" across a broad range of societies far far earlier than
Galileo's, or Buddha's, or Jesus's time. What had not evolved nor rose
to dominance was not "intellectual thinking" but an intellectual moral
order:
P
" Third, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the
intellectual order over the social order - ..."
to balance the basic facts that:
P
"Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They
originate out of society, which originates out of biology which
originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so
well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as social
patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns
are dominated by inorganic patterns." pg. 179
3WD
The rise of that moral order is documented by Pirsig in Chapter 22 this way:
P
"Or, within historical time, the day Socrates died to establish the
independence of intellectual patterns from their social orgins." p270
followed by,
P
"Or the day Descartes decided to start with himself as an ultimate
source of reality"
then,
P
"Phaedrus though is he had to pick one day when the shift from social
dominance of intellect to intellectual dominance of society took place,
he would pick November 11,1918, Armistice Day, the end of World War I."
pg 270.... "The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to
believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of
intellect." pg. 304
3WD
This all may seems nitpicking, but I think it is crucial to proper
understanding of the MoQ because as:
P
"One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of
things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future
this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something
better comes along." pg. 114
It is important to remember that there are also "low quality
intellectual explanations" or bad intellectual theories as well as good
ones. The one that Pirsig spotted which gave rise to the whole of the
MoQ and that has had a dramatic effect on our current culture is:
P
"The defect is that subject-object science has no provisions for
morals.... From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world
is a completely purposeless, valueless place" pg 277-8
So maybe those "common sense","salt of the earth", "down to earth",
"couldn't be nicer", guys rather the being ignorant, as you suggest, are
merely trying to maintain, or reintroduce a smiggen of values or morals
in a world that seems "completely purposeless". I think it was James (or
maybe Dewey) who said that in search of the truth, the Good, we must be
ever vigilant for "the cries of the wounded."
Thanks for YOUR time,
3WD
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