From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sun Oct 02 2005 - 07:46:46 BST
Anthony and Bo --
Ant McWatt stated on September 25th:
> Anyway, keeping in mind what Owen Barfield puts forward
> in "Saving the Appearances", it seems that primitive human
> cultures were using logic and the manipulation of symbols
> before the seeds of SOM arose with the Greeks.
Ant then quoted himself from September 22nd:
>To cut to the chase, if SOM was the intellectual level of the MOQ then
>that would mean the MOQ itself is part of SOM or that the MOQ is a
>non-intellectual static pattern (such as a social one). Both options
>seem nonsensical to me.
Whatever point Barfield was trying to make in "Saving the Appearances", the
fact that primitive cultures used logic and manipulated symbols prior to an
established philosophical dualism has no bearing on what intellect is. The
Pirsigian concept that Intellect is "pre-intellectual" is an epistemological
notion that has nothing to do with the sequence of historical events. It
seems to me that the term "pre-intellectual" is an obvious reference to the
MoQ fourth level which Pirsig believes "stands before" or "outside"
conscious intellection.
Since I don't subscribe to the theory of a "universal" or "collective"
intellect, I have to side with Bo on this issue.
Bo Skutvik replied September 29th:
> Intelligence again. Of course people of old did all these things,
> why keep reminding me? Have you forgotten that Pirsig has
> rejected the "thinking" intellect?
I, too, would like to see where Pirsig rejected the "thinking" intellect,
since intellect is most commonly defined as "the power of knowing or the
capacity of rational thought or understanding", which is a proprietary
function of the human mind.
Anthony further confuses our common understanding of this human function
with an abstract socio-cultural usage of the term "intellect" as a "body of
knowledge". This apparently was quoted from Pirsig's 2002 annotations for
"Lila's Child":
> RMP Annotation 86
> Since in the MOQ all divisions of Quality are static,
> it follows that high and low are subdivisions of static quality.
> "Static" and "Dynamic" are also subdivisions of static
> quality, since the MOQ is itself a static intellectual pattern
> of Quality..
Regardless of how one chooses to structure the divisions of Quality,
anything that involves the experience of a subject necessarily infers an
object. Intellect is the power of conscious thought. Intellectual thought
is the reflection of the individual on the objects of his experience.
Hence, the intellect is a divided (i.e., SOM) activity.
Ant quotes another Pirsig annotation.
> RMP Annotation 129
>
> Many forms of intellect do not have a subject-object
> construction. These include logic itself, mathematics,
> computer programming languages, and, I believe some
> primitive languages ...
None of these activities falls into the category of intellection in the
proprietary sense. Logic, Mathematics, and Computer Languages, like Science
and Philosophy, are technical disciplines or fields of study, each of which
has a body of knowledge associated with it. To equate such subjects with
the intellectual faculty of a human being is as illogical as saying that
Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is a revolution in Russia.
I see these linguistic abuses as an insult to the intelligence of reasonable
people. Defining reality in misconstrued terms obviously intended to
eliminate subjective consciousness in all its forms is a deception that
continues to tax the credibility of the MoQ.
Regards,
Ham
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