Greetings,
Mark Brooks writes,
"It's clear in the quote above that Pirsig does not believe that
subatomic particles have intellectual patterns."
Interesting statement. What about animals though: do they have intellectual
patterns?
Whilst briefly flicking through a psychology textbook I found a section
called - Cognitive Phenomena in animals.
There are lots of accounts of animals learning to do things such as...
- A chimpanzee stuck behind bars uses a short stick to draw to him a
longer stick which he can then use to reach a piece of fruit. The
caption goes, " It has learned to solve this problem by understanding the
relationship between the sticks and the piece of fruit."
- A chimpanzee stacks boxes to form a platform so that it can reach some
bananas.
- Rats are described as forming cognitive maps of a maze.
Also I remember a story about a group of pigeons being trained to
distinguish between Picasso and Monet paintings.
(To be honest, I find these things interesting because it shows how little
humans can sometimes make use their bigger brains. I include myself in
that!)
Clearly when an animal is trying to get some food it is doing so because the
food has biological value. However, that a chimp, for example, should do
that particular stick thing instead of just vainly throwing, say, the
shorter stick at the food suggests to me that it is choosing one
intellectual
pattern over many others - hence the title cognitive phenomena.
It seems to me that this is undeniably a chimp responding to intellectual
quality so that it can ultimately satisfy its biological needs. Yet
intellectual pattens of value require social patterns of value to sustain
them. However, social patterns of value are a creation of humanity. So we
have intellectual patterns of value existing pre-socially which is not
allowed by the MOQ!
Of course, the obvious rebuttal here is to say that animals aren't
responding to intellectual value but is there really any fundamental
difference between a chimp doing that stick trick and Pirsig fixing his
bike? Personally, I have a hunch that there something going astray here.
Finally, of that statement - We are suspended in language - I always think
of Einstein saying that he did his most abstract thought without words but
in pictures. I don't think he was suspended in language when he was doing
that.
Thanks.
IW
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