From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Mar 01 2003 - 20:07:21 GMT
Sam, Platt, Wim, Johnny and all:
DMB says:
The following comments show that there is a wide range of opinion about what
distinguishes the social from the intellectual level. Johnny seems to be
saying that all living things have ideas. Platt seems to be saying that all
human beings have intellectual values. Wim seems to insist that the social
level is altogether unthinking so that even the manufacture of tools is an
unconscious behaviour. Clearly, these various notions are not compatable and
somebody, or maybe everybody, has to be wrong. Check it out. I'll have more
comments below...
Platt asked Johnny:
>How do you define "idea?" Is a buzzard swooping down on an a gazelle
>carcass acting on an idea? How about a bee looking for nectar, or a
>germ looking for a cell to infect, or a sunflower following the sun
>across the sky? Where do ideas end and instincts begin?
Johnny answered:
This is why I think using "idea" is problematic. I do think bees have
ideas, and I could even, if drunk enough, defend the idea that sunflowers
have ideas too, just not very many. Schopenhauer's "The World As Will and
Idea" suggests that everything is an idea of itself and what it will.
Certainly we humans have ideas that we would put at the social level,
anyway, right? Like 'adultery is a sin' and stuff like that?
On Nov 24 Platt said:
'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."'
On Feb 18th, Wim said:
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'). ... Anyway, among
those patterns of unthinking behavior that were passed on between
generations of hominids long before intellectual patterns of valuewere
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. ... 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.
DMB says:
I guess it comes down to what we mean by words such as "instinct",
"unthinking", "idea", "intellectual" and other key terms. But surely the
trick here is to see what Pirsig means. He's the one who has "invented" the
MOQ's categories of being, but of course these are supposed to sort out the
things in the world that we already know. Only the sorting is new. The
social level is one of the most important ways that the MOQ is different
than SOM, and as such it is the source of a great deal of confusion. Thus
the various opinions re-posted here. Let me take another stab at it.
The social level is the level between instinct and philosophy. It is BETWEEN
the biological and the intellectual, but is neither of them. SOM can't solve
the mind/body problem because it does not see this middle term. It goes
directly from biolocial brains to intellectual ideas, as if there were
nothing in between, as if myth, ritual, religion and other social patterns
were merely immature, irrational, unscientific ideas. They are seen as BAD
ideas, but ideas all the same. Pirsig says no, these two forms of
consciousness, may seem to be all of a kind, but are in fact two completely
different levels of reality.
This important distinction is undermined by saying all living creatures have
ideas because it confuses biology with intellect. This distinction is undone
by saying all people have intellect because it confuses social values from
intellect. This distinction is erased by insisting that the social level is
unthinking or unconscious because that deprives the social of its
thoughtfull and wisdom. There was a point I made months ago that was pretty
much laughed off the stage, but perhaps the light shed on the issues in
conversations since
will make it easier to see. I'm especially thinking of the exchanges Between
Sam and me and others. I'd like to suggest that people "think" with social
values most of the time, that our "ideas" are social values. We could say
that thinking is social, whereas thinking ABOUT thinking is intellectual.
Take a look at what the Oxford Companion to Philosophy says about philosophy
itself.
"The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy is
thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order
character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of
thinking - formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge - about the world or
large parts of it. A more detailed, but still uncontroversially
comprehesive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking,
of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world
(mataphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief
(epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or
theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a
non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinquished by its
explicity rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic
nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in
which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued
assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body
of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everybody has occasion to doubt or
question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success
and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by
argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone
governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or
moral philsophy, in it most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in
rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."
DMB says:
Here I think we can see the difference between social level thinking and
intellectual thinking. Social level thinking is that "non-philosophical
counterpart", is everybody's "general conception", is the "unargued
assumptions", is thinking "without any theory". The social level is the
reason we can think, but it takes intellect to think about thinking. Science
is really not much different. The scientific method proscribes a very
certain way to think about what is being explored in the lab. And just about
any intellectual field will employ rationality and take a systematic
approach to the issues.
I think this is consistent with everything Pirsig says, such as the point I
keep making; that all our intellectual descriptions are culturally derived.
This is consistent with the idea that the first intellectual ideas could
have been derived from ritual and primitive cosmology stories. It fits with
Pirsig's insistence that Descartes depended on French culture to think. The
social level, which includes language itself, supplies us with our "general
conceptions" and "unargued assumptions" about the world and the intellect's
job is to think rationally and systematically about these conceptions and
assumptions. It is thinking about thinking.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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