From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 01:36:23 GMT
DMB, Platt, and all,
> Steve said:
> I am interested in DMB's claim that language is a social level thing. Is
> language a requirement for the evolution of society? Did the social level
> and the intellectual level evolve simultaneously or was the existence of
> social patterns a necessary pre-condition for the evolution of intellectual
> patterns (as inorganic patterns are necessary for biological patterns which
> are necessary for social patterns)? To say that language is an intellectual
> pattern makes more sense to me.
>
> DMB says:
> Yes, the social level is a necessary pre-condition for the evolution of the
> intellectual level. Intellect couldn't exist without it. We can't rightly
> say that language is intellectual because it contradicts the historical
> order of things. Remember all that talk about the Sophists? They were
> rhetoriticians, great talkers, masters of the language and they PRE-DATE the
> birth of the intellectual level, which Pirsig locates in ancient Greece with
> Socrates. There are lots and lots of reasons to put language at the social
> level, but this one is such a major theme in Pirsig's work that we hardly
> need anything else. But then there's the inescapable logic of it, which I
> already mentioned. Lila talks, but intellectually she's nowhere. Logically
> this means that the ability to use language in not dependent on intellect.
>
Steve says:
The quote that Platt posted recently seems to contradict this dating of the
intellectual level.
> "...Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and become an
> end in itself just as society has grown away from its original purpose of
> preserving physical human beings and become an end in itself, and this
> growing away from original purposes toward greater Quality is a moral
> growth."
Perhaps Pirsig's remarks on the birth of the intellectual level can be
reconciled by distinguishing the birth of the intellectual level "as an end
in itself" from the the birth of symbolic manipulation?
This would be the same birth date as that intellectualism--when the first
intellectual becomes one by valuing knowledge for its own sake (then perhaps
also the first philosopher.)
A similar question is that of society existing for other animals. Perhaps
packs of dogs are social patterns but dog society has not evolved to serve
itself the way human society has.
> DMB says:
> Language and math can be so confusing.
Steve says:
Wow! DMB confused?!
> DMB says:
> I'm not confused.
Oh, you meant me then :(
>
> DMB says:
>> Consider also the description Pirsig gave us
>> about his characters. He says flat out that intellectually she's nowhere.
>
> Steve:
> I don't know how you can take the line "intellectually she's nowhere" as far
> as you do. It cannot be taken literally because the moq is not a place. It
> is obvious hyperbole in Pirsig's "far out" and "groovy" vernacular.
>
> DMB says:
> Huh? Based on this, I have to assume that you don't know what "literally"
> means. The problem with literalism arises when one confuses a metaphorical
> statement with a statement of actual fact.
Steve:
I'm suggesting that metaphor is not the only literary device. His statement
sounds like hyperbole contained within a metaphor. (I think "Huh?" might
qualify as onomatopoeia. Maybe not.)
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