From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Mon Oct 24 2005 - 05:11:39 BST
Bo,
Scott said to Gav:
> The problem is: what do you mean by "intellect per se"? And how is
> intelligence different from that? The Greek word for that highest
> level you refer to was 'nous', and the Latin equivalent was
> 'intellectus'.
Bo said:
The Greek word! No wonder. The Greeks were the first SOMists
(or intellectual-ists in a MOQ context) and this is the way intellect
likes to present itself: A mind that thinks while it really is the
mind/matter divide itself.
Scott said:
> One could translate it as 'intelligence' or as
> 'intellect', but I'm not sure what the difference is.
Bo said:
Can't you see that you are caught in the mind-idea world of the
Greeks and that the MOQ is the first ever break-out from that
confinement? And that Pirsig will not think like Barfield or Dewey
or what names you have dropped since you began. I am however
pleased that you and Mr. Maxwell have "found each other".
Scott:
I see no evidence in, say, Plotinus, that he thought in terms of "a mind
that thinks". For Plotinus, the first emanation from the One was Intellect
(nous), not Something That Thinks. Nor did Hegel or Coleridge, so I hardly
think of the MOQ as the "first ever". In fact, I don't think that was much
of a confinement at all. I don't assume a "mind that thinks" either, and I
wonder where you get the idea that I do. I just assume "thinking", and that
it will always shake out in a dynamic/static manner (though one can use
other word pairs as well, including S/O[2], though not S/O[1]). (And this is
hardly the first major spat I've had with Mark.)
Bo said:
MOQ's 4th static level is S/O-reason, but not thinking because
3rd. level people arrived at (still does) totally different results
from the same data. Nor is it intelligence because 3rd. level
people were just as smart as we are and did marvellous things in
many fields.
Scott:
But they did not have the same data. That is Barfield's whole point. The
emergence of S/O[2] thinking required (and abetted) a change in the data,
from original participation (where what we call thinking was perceived as
being done to them) to our current state of loss of conscious participation,
where thoughts are sensed as being "in here" (we do it) and physical objects
as being void of what we call mental.. It is only because of this change in
the texture (for want of a better word) of the data that SOM, and
particularly materialism, could arise. I find Barfield convincing, and I
have not come across a better description of just what the change from the
third to the fourth level was about. Whether Pirsig knew anything about
Barfield when he wrote Lila I don't know (not many people did), but I will
always wonder what he would have made of Barfield's ideas. They are great
contributions for understanding the fourth level (and for supporting SOL, by
the way).
- Scott
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