DMB,
> Scott wrote:
> THe Greeks started the process, but it took 2000 years before it became
> common to think "I am my mind", and until one does, one doesn't have
> SO-intellect. The Greeks and the medievals were concerned mainly with
> the appearance/reality distinction, not the mind/body distinction.
>
> DMB says:
> The timeline seems ok, but I wouldn't characterize the main concerns
of the
> ancients or medievals the way you do here. Wilber's terms, mythic and
> rational, or Pirsig's, social and intellectual, characterize the
> distinctions well.
I agree the words (mythic/rational and social/intellectual) are good
ones, but I think there is a lot of work to be done to clarify them --
but I guess that is largely what we are trying to do here (and which is,
if I remember correctly, why you started this thread in the first place.)
The issue is how to distinguish intellectual-level thinking from
social-level thinking. I made a remark (to Bo) a while back to the
effect that in my opinion, the intellectual level hasn't really come
about, except in mathematics. It exists in mathematics because there the
thinking is the mathematics -- there is nothing "beyond" the thinking
that it is about.
But this would seem to deny that alpha-thinking (Barfield's term --
purposely chosen to have no connotations), which is thinking about
things (like what scientists do, and what the Greeks seemed to have been
the first to do) is intellectual-level thinking. It is clearly different
from mythic thinking, which is largely the social level speaking through
individual minds, and it seems to be what Pirsig has in mind as the
intellectual level. It is, however, clearly S/O-based, as to have
something to think about, one needs that something to be an object.
This means that alpha-thinking is still somewhat bound to something
social, namely, our culture's belief in the independent reality of that
which we are thinking about.
So...
>
> DMB says:
> The fall and a promised redemption. Hmmm. This demonstrates how mythic
> thinking can be incorporated successfully into the intellectual
level. Nice.
> And I thinks its quite right SOM is a necessary stage. It has
dis-integrated
> the mythic world view, but that's what has to happen at the beginning
of a
> new phase or new level. Hopefully a new worldview that has been
> re-integrated will emerge, one that goes beyond mere materialism, and the
> limits of SOM will melt away.
To press the mythic thinking some more, I would argue that we are in s
state which, though traditionally called Original Sin, I would call
Original (or Basic) Insanity. Why do we have to be TOLD that Quality is
Real? And, of course, why do we fight and squabble, etc., etc.
Most of these manifestations of insanity are on the social level, and
the idea that the intellectual level is the source for its cure I take
as a MoQ given. And I take as a given that alpha-thinking is its
starting point. But, as noted, alpha-thinking for the most part takes
place under false premises, namely a belief in an independent objective
existence. So I consider the main MoQ task to find a way out of this, to
find a way to think without this presupposition. Mathematics is not, at
first glance, that way, since mathematics restricts itself to the
precisely definable, and trying to do that with the philosophic
vocabulary is probably hopeless. But it serves as a kind of example.
- Scott
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