From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 23 2003 - 22:58:51 GMT
Wim, Sam and all:
Sam asked David B. 15 Feb:
'what ... constitutes the "necessity of the social level"? ... what social
institutions, customs - rituals?? - etc are needed in order to preserve or
develop a functioning intellectual level?'
David B. answered 15 and 16 Feb:
'It's what makes us human, more than animals. It's what allows us to think
and talk, gives us our desires and conceptual categories, ideas of rights
and wrong. It's most of what we are. It's as necessary as the body. ...
All languages, civilizations, societies, myths, morals, religions and
rituals are products of the social level. It's huge and ancient. It is
everything about us that is neither animal nor intellectual. It's everything
that makes us human.'
Wim said:
I don't think the social level as David describes it can be properly
separated from the intellectual level (not to be confused with
'intellect' or 'intelligence' understood as biological capacities of our
species). Pirsig's descriptions aren't much better.
Pirsig writes in chapter 30 of 'Lila':
'These rituals may be the connecting link between the social and
intellectual levels of evolution. One can imagine primitive song-rituals and
dance-rituals associated with certain cosmology stories, myths, which
generated the first primitive religions. From these the first intellectual
truths could have been derived.'
Wim continued:
you can interpret this in different extreme ways:
1) Religious (song- & dance-)rituals (associated with ...), being the
connecting link between the social and intellectual levels, are the first
intellectual patterns of values, the basis of the intellectual level (not
just a decadent corruption of it).
DMB says:
When all the qualifiers and parenthetical information is removed, what
you've said here is, "religious ritual are the first intellectual patterns
of values". But Pirsig says "from these the first intellectual truths could
have been derived". I think there is a great distance between your
interpretation and Pirsig's explicit statement. The difference between "are"
and "derived from" is enormous.
Wim has an alternative interpretation:
2) These rituals, along with the cosmology stories, myths and resulting
primitive religions belong to the social level and only the intellectual
truths derived from them belong to the intellectual level.
DMB says:
Only intellectual truths belong to the intellectual level? Clearly. Or are
you saying that intellectual patterns NOT derived from the social level are
not truely intellectual? Don't worry about that. As I understand it, such a
thing isn't really even possible. That's why thinking otherwise leads to so
many problems. Anyway, I think the quote is just one more way to show the
inescapability of the social level, that intellect depends upon it for
existence.
Wim said:
I think Pirsig's definition of the intellectual level (from 'Lila's Child')
as 'the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that
stand for patterns of experience' would indicate the first interpretation is
closest to what he -in retrospect- meant. The cosmology stories, myths and
primitive religions and maybe even the rituals themselves can clearly be
understood as 'symbols that stand for patterns of experience'.
DMB says:
I think you're leaning on the Lila's Child quote too much and forgeting all
the other things that Pirsig has said about intellect, not to mention what
we know from history and from our own lives. Obviously myths, rituals and
religions are not what Pirsig was talking about and in fact this is a short
list of the things intellectual values seek to transcend. Pirsig's quote
about the manipulation of symbols tried to get at the difference in a
specific cognitive function sort of way, but don't make too much of that.
All symbols are not the same. Mythological symbols are of a whole different
order and level from mathematical symbols, for example. We have very
different ideas about the social level. You seem to think its filled with
half-conscious, zombie-like creatures who are nothing like us. For example,
in ansering how the level's are preserved and develop you say...
Wim:
Complex patterns of unthinking behavior that have no direct survival value
from the social level are needed for the intellectual level, for 'meaning'
to develop.
DMB says:
I don't wish to get into preservation or development, that's why I extracted
this from its context. I just want to point out what you're saying about the
social level; "complex patterns of unthinking behavior". Why unthinking? Why
behavior? Social values are rich and wise and intelligent. There's a whole
lot of thinking going on. But there is a difference between that and the
intellect, which is a certain kind of thinking, a different level of
thinking. Recall that both the third and fourth levels can be called
subjective, they both involve thinking.
Wim said:
My way of separating the social and intellectual level in the context of
this Pirsig quote is that such rituals -being a kind of 'machine language
interface'- belong BOTH to the social level (when interpreted as unthinking
behavior copied between generations in processes focussed on seeking
'status/celebrity') AND to the intellectual level (when interpreted as
symbolizing/referring to experience outside the rituals themselves, e.g.
hunting experiences, the experience of seasonal rhythms, experience of birth
and death etc.).
DMB says:
Oh, no. Again, if we remove the qualifiers you haven't said much. Your "way
of separating the social and intellectual level is.. such rituals... belong
BOTH to the social level...AND the intellectual level" Yikes! you separate
by saying its both? Very confusing. I dare say it makes no sense.
Wim said:
It's a pity that Pirsig in chapter 12 only compared his
hardware-software-novel analogy only with 'trying to explain social moral
patterns in terms of inorganic chemistry patterns' and not with the
relation -over two 'machine level interfaces'- between intellectual patterns
of value and biological patterns of value. He didn't even mention what is
the 'machine level interface' between biological and social patterns of
value. So we have to choose for ourselves. My choice (for the interface
between social and intellectual patterns of values) is both rituals and
symbolic language (e.g. the letters that are forming this text).
DMB says:
Machine interface? Where'd you get the idea that such a thing exists or is
needed? I think you've taken the computer analogy way too far. Pisig is only
illustrating how the level are discreet, how they each have their own
"language".
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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