From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Feb 20 2003 - 15:07:15 GMT
Dear Wim:
> You wrote 11 Feb 2003 09:58:17 -0500:
> 'To determine at what level a certain object, artifact or action belongs I
> ask myself, "What is the highest moral pattern I can reasonably attribute
> to it?" If the answer is biological, this will automatically include the
> inorganic since the biological is dependent on inorganic patterns.
> Likewise, if the answer is intellectual, the social, biological and
> inorganic patterns are also included because the intellectual pattern is
> dependent on these lower level patterns. So of course a bike is "also an
> inorganic pattern of value" as are all artifacts I can imagine. But what
> distinguishes it as a bike are the intellectual patterns that designed and
> produced it.'
>
> If your method of attributing a level to a pattern of value allows
> attributing more than one level to the same pattern of value, then always
> choosing the highest one is a way to solve the ambiguity. That leaves the
> question unanswered HOW you attribute (one or more) levels to patterns of
> value. I suggested 'by the way they are held together when understood as
> wholes holding parts'. You disagreed, but didn't give an alternative.
How? Roughly I break the levels down into the world of ideas
(intellectual), the world of human associations (social), the world of
animals and plants (biological) and the world of particles, chemicals and
minerals (inorganic). Human artifacts result from ideas, "the highest
pattern I can attribute to them."
> You quoted Pirsig 14 Sep 2001 13:41:57 -0400 (and quite a few times
> afterwards) as saying:
> 'Intellectuals must find biological behavior, no matter what its ethnic
> connection, and limit or destroy destructive biological patterns with
> complete moral ruthlessness, the way a doctor destroys germs, before those
> biological patterns destroy civilization itself.' You applied that to
> terrorism: 'those who are terrorists and those countries who support and/or
> tolerate terrorists have the moral standing of germs and like germs must be
> deliberately and ruthlessly annihilated by all means at our disposal.' If
> terrorists are biological patterns of values according to you, how would
> you classify artifacts designed and produced by terrorists, say a
> shoe-bomb?
Note in Pirsig's statement the word "behavior." A shoe-bomb is an
intellectual pattern. Using it to blow up an airliner at 30,000 feet killing
300 innocent civilians is biological pattern of behavior because terror,
violence and death are the operative practices at that level. It's like
guns. Guns (intellectual pattern) don't kill people; people kill people
(biological pattern).
> You wrote 24 Nov 2002 20:00:03 -0500:
> 'All humans have intellect. To suggest that an individual's religious
> beliefs, political leanings, or sexual practices are the decisive criteria
> in determining intellect is ... "quite preposterous."' So one can
> reasonably attribute to ALL humans intellectual patterns of value (and to
> some even higher artistic/religious yet unpatterned value?!). Are you sure
> the highest level you can attribute to terrorists is biological???
Yes, based on their behavior which defines them as "terrorists."
> Isn't it
> equally preposterous to suggest that an individual's terrorist practices
> are decisive in determining that it belongs at the biological level?
No. The key word is "practices" which make a terrorist a terrorist, a
person who intentionally and randomly kills without warning.
> You wrote 11 Feb 2003 09:58:17 -0500 again:
> 'What artifacts did you have in mind that were built before the first
> intellectual pattern? Recall that Pirsig said that the intellect's
> evolutionary purpose was "to help a society find food, detect danger, and
> defeat enemies." (24) Doesn't this mean that intellectual patterns
> (language and such) were around since the beginning of human society? Their
> "independence" from social patterns and becoming an entirely separate level
> comes much later.'
> I think it is confusing to say that intellectual patterns of value were
> there before the intellectual level was there (as 'an entirely separate
> level'). At the start of chapter 12 of 'Lila', where Pirsig 'defines' the
> levels as discrete and operating simultaneously but almost independently,
> he uses 'levels' and 'systems of static patterns of value' as
> interchangeable. I think society and social patterns of value holding
> societies together were there before intellectual patterns of value were
> around to help societies to (better) find food, detect danger and defeat
> enemies.
For humans, social patterns by themselves can't find food. It takes
thinking, planning. Unlike primates, humans have to reason to survive.
> Social patterns of value already offered freedom from biological
> want and had non-intellectual ways of finding food, detecting danger and
> defeating enemies. Intellectual patterns of value (to the extent that they
> didn't go off on purposes of their own) only helped society to do better in
> that respect. I think human society began with hominids, around 2 million
> years ago, who had only a rudimentary language with which they could
> express and communicate emotions. Their social patterns of value, that gave
> them an edge over anthropoid apes, were patterns of unthinking behavior
> that were passed on between generations because of a stronger inclination
> towards curiosity and mimicry. They could never have phrased the question
> 'Why are you doing that?' to their elders, but from an intellectual point
> of view that's exactly how we can interpret their curious and mimicking
> behavior. Their elders could never have answered that question in their
> rudimentary language, but from our intellectual point of view their
> behavior (showing how to do things and if necessary beating their juniors
> into line if they deviated) expressed the answer: 'because it has always
> worked and will work best now'. Intellectual patterns of value were first
> created by homo sapiens, between 50.000 and 100.000 years ago. Rituals
> (elaborate patterns of essentially unthinking behavior preserving the best
> know-how available to a society) may have been 'the connecting link between
> the social and intellectual levels of evolution' (according to Pirsig in
> chapter 30 of 'Lila'). They may have enabled 'the oldest idea known to
> man', that 'the physical order of the universe is also the moral order of
> the universe', the first proper answer to 'Why are you doing that?':
> 'Because that's how the universe works, that is the order we should
> uphold.' Another possible connecting link between the social and
> intellectual levels of evolution (according to me) may have been symbolic
> language, but that is another subject. Anyway, among those patterns of
> unthinking behavior that were passed on between generations of hominids
> long before intellectual patterns of value were around were ... the making
> of artifacts. At first only sharpened sticks and stones to beat of
> predators with. They were neither designed nor consciously discovered. They
> were simply used because they worked. (And others that didn't work led to
> the extinction of the group that used them, so the making of others wasn't
> passed on to next generations.) But they WERE artifacts. Even today,
> although most artifacts are consciously designed or discovered the first
> time, they are often (re)produced by unthinking routine behavior, by social
> patterns of value.
I see nothing in your description above that distinguishes early humans
from a group of chimps, baboons or the food-washing monkeys of
Japan. "Patterns of unthinking behavior" is an apt description of what
goes on at the biological level. Humans did not and cannot survive on
instinct, imitation and group hugs alone. Somebody had to think to
sharpen a stick or a stone instead of using it as found. Somebody had
to think to keep those early people alive. As Pirsig says," . . . someone
has to be first."
So Pirsig's statement about intellect being used early on to find food,
detect danger and defeat enemies supports my contention that what
separates man from beast is his ability to put two and two together, not
some herding instinct, copycat behavior or reliance on tooth and claw.
Platt
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