Hi, Bo & Scott,
The two of you seem to me have created your own version of MOQ. A 'Reform'
Pirsig version. By this I mean that how you classify things as either
Social or Intellect is in ways that I don't recall from either Zen and the
Art, Lila or Pirsig's commentary notes from Lila's Child. Could you point
to Pirsig citations to explain the following:
Feelings are Social
Emotions are Social
Q-Intellect is only reflective thinking
[Where do you place non-reflective thinking, "Monkey Mind"?]
Eureka thought: not Social but Intellect Level [See Scott way below in the
original July 29th post which this a reply to.]
You seem to be implying that only "Conscious thought" is Q-Intellect?
Or is it only rational, logical thought is Q-Intellect.
Where is irrational thought? I already asked this question once before, but
it was ignored.
Where is dreams?
Where are delusions?
Where are hallucinations?
Where are phobias and fetishes? [The thinking that a psychiatrist would
call having ideas that would be classified as being beliefs that demonstrate
a phobia or a fetish.]
They way I see it there is a continuum of choices available to you. At one
extreme is a position that Pirsig is wrong. The other extreme Pirsig is
right and you two recant. In the middle is infinite possibilities of
variations. I am certain you will place your selves in the vast middle
zone. [This is of course Null-A analysis. If there was only A-logic, two
valued logic your choice would be: your 100% right or your 100% wrong. ]
I believe that Q-Intellect is where all of the above is found. Since I and
I think Pirsig consider Q-Intellect to be the MOQ label for the mind.
Here is my cite upon which I base my beliefs. The following is a copy of
the recent version of Lila's Child. [Note 24 is Pirsig saying Q-Intellect =
Mind.]
-------------------------------
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!
------------------------------------------------
I have no problem with the 'Reform' movement! I happen to be a Reform Jew.
I engage in making my own maps and stating my own beliefs about the MOQ. I
only want you two to state that you are Orthodox in your views and thus can
cite Pirsig's words in your defense or you are Reform in your views and thus
you can't give Pirsig words to defend your beliefs. I only want clarity.
You don't have to like my metaphysics but I clearly put myself out as the
author of my beliefs. You two seem to be saying your views are Pirsig's and
not your own, and lastly challenging my views as veering off from Pirsig
Orthodoxy, when you are engaged in veering off from Orthodoxy and hence
doing the same.
Trying to bring clarity,
Gary
ps: the whole one & many issue is an interesting one and I would like to
return to that later.
----- Original Message -----
From: <skutvik@online.no>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 5:09 AM
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
> Scott.
>
> You wrote:
>
> > [Bo:]"Feeling" is a terrible imprecise term and
> > occurs in all Indo-European languages it seems.
> > Sensation and emotion should be held separate. As I
> > see it the former is the biological "expression"
> > while the latter is the social one. ('Interaction'
> > and 'reason' the inorganic and intellectual)
>
> > [Scott:]Yes, it is imprecise, but there are difficulties with
> > "emotion" as well. Fear, it seems to me, can be biological or social.
> > (I suspect this is an old topic on this forum, so bear with me.)
>
> I shouldn't mar our basic agreement, but my point is that life started
very
> simple yet able to sense its environment (specialized organs are some
later
> refinement) A low-value environment hardly evokes "fear" at the single
cell
> plane yet we must not infer that the multi-cell organisms evolved beyond
> sensing, the very rise into the realm of emotions IS the social
development!.
> As biology we humans do no more that sense, it is our social component
> that becomes "afraid". Thus seen the social roots are deep in the
biological
> level, but that is not counter to Pirsig's thesis that the human society
is the
> spring-board to intellect.
>
> An aside. In French sense is "sentir" and emotion is "resentir", this
catches
> my point beautifully: Emotions are senses re-fined to a new value where
(for
> instance) the unpleasantness of being bitten is abstracted into fear
> (someone watching knows what it means) I fact the whole static range can
> be seen in this light: Sensing is re-fining a particular inorganic signal
into
> unpleasantness while emotion is (as said) the unpleasantness refined into
> fear of same, and reason is fear objectivized and thus different from the
> subjective experience.
>
> > [Scott:]This doesn't seem right to me. I agree about the VALUE, but
> > not that a "eureka" experience is social (it may be partially on
> > occasion, as in "Wait'll I tell so-and-so what I just figured out",
> > but there is more to it than that.) Same problem with aesthetic
> > delight, so again I suspect this is an oft-discussed problem. Perhaps
> > we need a new word? Or can we just use "aesthetic", ignoring its
> > etymology?
>
> An intellectual emotion is contradictory. Aesthetic delight? OK but then
AD
> is the very thing that has brought about it all ....and a "Metaphysics of
> Aesthetic Delight" could be coined.
>
> > [Scott:] I noticed in my last reading of LILA that Pirsig brings up
> > several platypi, including mind/matter, but doesn't bring up the One
> > and the Many, and so doesn't explicitly dissolve it. He does
> > (implicitly) rename it, however, as DQ/sq. So what I see as lacking is
> > to show how SOM beliefs keep us from understanding their proper
> > relationship. Coleridge and others make the important point that we
> > must distinguish without dividing, and I think this is the way
> > forward. If we stop at just dividing DQ from sq, the mind/matter
> > platypus is still around, asking how does the Many become One (in
> > perception and cognition -- or is it a case of the One becoming
> > Many?). Perhaps we have to come to understand that this is the wrong
> > question to ask, or maybe we are reduced to waiting for transcendence
> > for the Answer. Which may be the case. On the other hand, I think I
> > would like to look deeper into James' radical empiricism to see how he
> > deals with it, if he does.
>
> This brings the very foundations up again,so let's leave it alone for now,
the
> differences with Gary are most pressing.
>
> Bo
>
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