RICHARD wrote:
>I've read ZAMM over ten times and LILA about
>six and so far I still regard ZAMM as the far more impressive and important
>work (despite what RMP himself thinks).
>I know this attitude isn't going to win me any friends here, but
>hey, popularity isn't necessarily Quality, right?
Actually I agree, and I know one or two others do as well. LILA just isn't
half as well written as ZMM. I think ZMM will never go out of print while
LILA will probably be forgotten completley in 40 or 80 years -- partly because
ZMM really is one of the best-written books in American literature, and partly
because it is (as RMP called it) a "culture-bearer" of that period (along w/
EASY RIDER and WOODSTOCK... it's become an American icon). (I did an
unscientific poll of teacher-education students here at UT and found that most
of them recognized the title "ZMM" [and a few had even read it] while not one
of the 30-or-so I asked could name the title of a single work by Plato.)
Anybody (even RMP) would have a very hard time convincing me that ZMM isn't
the higher quality of the two books.
GLOVE wrote:
________________
Donny, i tend to disagree with your assumption here and i believe Pirsig
does as well in Lila, page 344..."Within this evolutionary relationship it
is possible to see that intellect has functions that predate science and
philosophy. 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 society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it
invents for this purpose."
after reading this passage, the monkey opening a coconut with a stone is
clearly an example of the intellect at work. certainly it is a biologically
driven need that the monkey feels, but how did the monkey learn to use the
rock to smash open the coconut? i would guess by seeing other monkeys do it,
perhaps its mother. so the monkey is using a social event to learn an
intellectual exercise to facilitate the satisfying of a biologically driven
desire for food.
__________________
ME:
As I view it, Poincare's rule of "conventionalism" still applies to the MoQ. I
do not believe that the 4 ststic levels are "given," or "out there." I think
this is a system not unlike euclideian geomitry. Their are numerous ways we
could divide it up. The shape the 4 or 5 or 10 levels take all depends on how
we make cuts w/ our analytic knife. The question is: what is the most
convinent, usefull, functional way to do it. Nobody uses non-euclidian
geometry to build a house, but euclideian geomitry is poorly limiting when
mapping space tensors (or so I hear).
Try this out:
What is a proof? Fundamentaly a proof is a particuler type of social exchange
designed to bring about consent. If you and I have a dissagreement, then
their are a number of ways I can get you to agree that I am right. I can
offer you a bribe. I can threaten to with-hold money. I can send Rocko and
Knuckles over to your house to beat the hell out of you. I could charm you w/
my winning smile and rapier-like witt.
But we all hold that their is a best, morally/socially correct way for us to
settle our differences. This (whatever form that method may take) is for me
to offer you a proof. I say "whatever form..." because what counts as a proof
varies from one society to another and from one era (age, epoch, period...) to
another. 17-18th century gentelmen may have fought a dual. Of course if a
17-18th (or even 19th) century commoner disagreed w/ a gentelman, then it
would be perfectablly moral (socialably correct) for the gentalman to simplely
have his retainers beat or whipp the man. If a black man in the south
disagreed w/ a white man as late as the 40-50s then the white man would pretty
much be correct by default. And Native Americans were not allowed to testify
in coart until as late as 1940 (as I've heard it told) because they were
considered a basically dishonest and untrustworthy people.
But now, today, we live in more enlightened times, right? Because we hold
that social statuss has no bareing on proof. In the activity of proving, the
social playing field is leveled. (Of course this is only an ideal, as O.J.
Simpson proved quite nicely -- social status, wealth and celebrity still has
everything to do w/ proof in most cases.... But it's a nice, enlightened
ideal.) This ideal of proof independent from social statuss really comes
about first in the 18th cen. Enlightenment (we call it the value of
"objectivity"), but it doesn't really hit the main-stream until the first
World War -- the birth of the Modern world.
(Am I to interpret those of you who say society is of higher moral value than
"intellecet" as meaning that we should not resort to rational, [relative]
objectivity when setteling social debates? Should we insted resort just to
social class? Force? I'm afraid you crowd are going to have a very hard time
selling your version of the MoQ to the public, indeed.)
True facts are the results of proofs. They are nothing more than this. There
is no Truth "out there" independent of our proving activities -- our
moral/SOCIAL proving activities. Only societies can generate true facts. As
someone else has said: "A fact that can't be communicated is like money that
can't circulate -- it has no value."(Dwight Van de Vate) What has no value,
does not exist.
F=ma is true. How is it true? It is proven scientifically. Science is the
method of proof. Is science true? How so? Certainly it can't be
scientifically true -- that makes no sense. What could you possibly use to
*prove* a system of proof? We can resolve things w/in science, just as we can
find the winner of a baseball game. But what if a baseball team played a
football team and neither could agree on what game they were playing?
SCIENCE IS NOT TRUE. Science is moral. Science is a method *we* -- our
SOCIETY -- values as a means to setteling arguments and generating facts. It
is socially correct. It is moral.
There, in a nutshell, is my concept of IntPoVs and the the Int-Soc interface.
It probably does differ from Pirsig's, but I'm not after the "real" MoQ (like
the "real" painting in the art gallery), I'm looking for what's most usefull
in most situations. This makes good sense to me. A lot of what I see thrown
around about IntPoVs (esspecialy, Int.= Mind, thought, ego, consciousness,
etc.) does not.
Monkey smashing coconut w/ rock for food = Bio. value -- makes sense. Makes
good *intellectual* sense (it fits those Int. values of clearity, simplicity,
lack of internal contradiction...). THAT you can teach to grade school'rs.
("Here, kids, is an example of natural values in action.")
Back to RICHARD:
>Individuals, not societies, are the source of ideas. Societies may
>eventually grow to embody and value those ideas, but they start with a
>person, be it Buddha or Jesus or Bodhi Dharma or Plato or Robert M. Pirsig.
>Societies may seize on these ideas and combine them, but
>they originate from individuals.
Rick, I've argued on here before that it is un-usefull to look at "society" as
meaning "contra-individual." You will find it far more helpfull to give-up
that notion and take "society" to mean "contra-biological."
The diffrence between a person (social entity) and a homo-sapian (bio-entity)
is the "socializing process." Infants and feral kids and boys raised by
wolves are purly biological entities. But children, hrough the socializing
process, become people. This begins (and this is important; listen up!) by
synching the Bio rhythms to a social rhythm. An animal empties his bladder
whenever he gets the urge. *People* control ourselves. The domestication of
wild animals and the socialization of homo-sapians is the same thing, really,
except that the one is something you do to other species and the other is
something done to your own -- and it is a lot more extensive. Social entities
are what we call "people," and do note that not all hono-sapians are people.
Here in Tennessee, blacks weren't full people until recently. Women wern't
either. In some parts of the world (India, China...) they still arn't. The
most intersting thing that happens to crazy people is that lose their "people"
status. They are no longer allowed to manage their own affairs; they lose
their rights to sue me in coart, to correct me in a logical proof, and so on.
Another feature of the socializing process that needs to be noted is that it
is the basis of the S-O distinction. "Personhood" is defined only
reciprically. Only persons get to say who other people are, and if you can't
tell people from non-people then you are not recognized as a person. A grown
man who talks w/ his teddy bear the way a child would is headed for the funny
farm. Children must learn the difference between knowing, mind-ed, socialized
Subjects and mere objects (be they a rock, a dog, or the criminally insane).
(Hegel termed this 'S-O consciousness'.)
But I digress. To return to my point:
Donny Palmgren = a social entity
Donny Palmgren is a set of moral/social rhythms/patterns imposed over the
natural rhythms of homo-sapian biology. (This is why the personality could die
w/o the organism dying -- coma, psychotic break, schitzophrenic attack, join a
cult and get brainwashed by those pesky New Age'rs...) In turn these bio
rhythms are imposed on top of the mechanics/rhythms of "this crude matter" (as
Master Yoda says). (The organism could die w/o the matter/energy being
destroyed.) And to shift in the other direction: Donny Palmgren, *because* he
is recognized as a mind-ed, socialized personality -- a reasonable self (in
the sense of "That nut has lost all reason!") -- he is allowed to engage in
the proving activity -- to step up onto that "objective" playing-field of
logic and reason (in the sense of "I'm trying to reason w/ you.").
To keep it as simple (and usefull/convienent) as we can:
InOrgPoVs = the laws (values) of physics/chemestry
BioPoVs = the law of the jungle (Darwinian values of survivle/procreation)
SocPoVs = how "one behaves" ("One does not do such things!") including fashion
values, manners, "morality" (in the normal sense), and 'the law.'
IntPoVs = the rules (values) of logic and reason (comunicability,
simplicity...)
RICHARD
>I would very much like to be corrected on this point. I
>hate thinking that Pirsig may have something wrong. His ideas have changed
>the way I see everything and I want nothing more than to understand them as
>completely as possible.
I can't say that this is the answer Pirsig would have given you -- I doubt it
is! My way of thinking here is mostly influinced by Erving Goffman and G.W.F.
Hegel. But I hope it helps. A few months back, Bodvar and I went in circles
arould the Bio-Soc-Int interface question, and (I believe) you can find that
material archived on the LS websight. If not, Rick, or anybody, e-mail me
direct and I can send some those older posts direct to you. If this turns out
to be our topic next month I might re-post some of that, anyway.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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