Hi Gary, DMB and all:
> Gary said:
> But, here's a question: What about our human ancestor's who took a stone
> and used it as a tool and even manipulate the shape of that stone to make
> it in to a better tool, should this be called a type of 4th level MOQ
> thinking? It lacks formal sophistication of Einstein's theories of General
> Relativity, but in it's essence are they both (the stone shaping and the
> formulating of General Relativity) thinking and thus 4th level activities?
> DMB says:
> Yes, they both involve "thinking". But the whole point is that its very
> important to make distinctions between different KINDS of thinking. This is
> the only way to tell the difference between the 3rd and 4th levels. They
> both involve "thinking", but there are very important differences. Without
> the ability to discern between the two levels, the moral codes are useless
> and then so is the MOQ. The inability or unwillingness to make this
> distinction wrecks the whole system. Everybody already knows that rocks are
> distinctly different than organisms. The distinction between social level
> thinking and intellectual level thinking is every bit as dramatic and
> profound. Its no small thing.
You will not find in LILA any mention of social level thinking vs.
intellectual level thinking. The distinction between the levels is a matter
of which pattern dominates the other. Pirsig clearly points out that prior
to WWI the Victorian social pattern dominated the intellectual pattern
whose historic purpose "that predate science and philosophy" was "to
help society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies." Gary's
example of our human ancestor manipulating a stone to make it a better
tool shows intellect serving its early purpose. After WWI, the intellectual
pattern based on the scientific assumption that reality consists of
subjects and objects came to dominate the social level. That
dominance, according to Pirsig, "was screwing everything up" because
the pattern "has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science
has no provision for morals." Pirsig's identification of this "defect" is the
key to understanding the MOQ. Pirsig thinks the MOQ "could be a
replacement for the paralyzing intellectual system that is allowing all
this destruction to go unchecked."
Why is the present intellectual level based on subject-object science a
disaster? In Pirsig's words, "Morals can't function normally because
morals have been declared intellectually illegal by the subject-object
metaphysics that dominates present social thought." Note carefully the
last two words.
DMB tries to make the distinction between the social and intellectual
levels a matter of mythic world views vs.rational thinking. As I explained
in a previous post, today's belief in science when taken to the extreme
is just as mythic as any fundamentalist religion. Among the myths of
science are that the universe suddenly appeared by chance, that
matter/energy is the basis of all reality, that there is no purpose in
evolution and that the scientific method is the only legitimate way to
establish truth.
This is not to say that the scientific world view is without merit. It is, as
Pirsig says, a high quality idea. But as he also points out, it is still an
idea, an idea that threatens to destroy the social level on which it
depends and thereby, like a cancer, destroy itself.
Platt
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