From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 03 2005 - 13:21:32 GMT
Scott,
I think we have 3 points of disagreement. Let me start at the end,
with the easy one:
> Finally, on the intellect/intelligence distinction, I see none. When a
> materialist speaks of "nature's intelligence" s/he is speaking somewhat
> tongue-in-cheek, and I think the same can be said of the way Bo speaks of
> it. As I see it, to say of some process that it is intelligent is
> meaningless unless there is value involved, and to say there is value
> involved is meaningless unless there is awareness involved, and a process
> that involves choosing among possibilities based on estimating consequences.
> That is, there is intellect involved.
All I'm saying is that, if we want to retain Pirsig's label for the
4th level - "intellect" - then we need to have a terminological
distinction between intellect and intelligence, so that "intelligence"
can refer to the same (non-)thing as Quality, and "intellect" can be
reserved for the intelligence that resides in autonomous individuals.
The second, closely related, point of disagreement lies in your claim
that "to say of some process that it is intelligent is meaningless
unless there is value involved, and to say there is value involved is
meaningless unless there is awareness involved, and a process
that involves choosing among possibilities based on estimating
consequences." While I agree that intelligence (as Quality) entails
value, I don't agree that value entails "a process
that involves choosing among possibilities based on estimating
consequences". This is because I want to extend "intelligence" all the
way down to the inorganic level, obviously in an attenuated and rigid
form. Amoebas and carbon molecules don't estimate consequences (they
don't have a "temporal buffer", as I think Case would say), but they
do behave in accordance with extremely rigid and predictable patterns
of value. Basically, I want to redescribe "intelligence" in exactly
the same way that Pirsig redescibes "value" so that it can refer to
that which holds a glass of water together.
Now to the really interesting one:
> A perfectly detached intellect, I think, would not be subjective.
Actually, now I come to think of it, this might not be such a big
deal. Let me ask you a question: Would a perfectly detached intellect
be autonomous? Presumably yes. So what, then, do you consider to be
the difference between autonomy and subjectivity?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Regards,
Mike
On 11/2/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
> Mike, Bo, et al
>
> This is mostly in response to Mike's initial post in this thread, but let me
> start here:
>
> Bo said:
> I too find Barfield's "participation" model most apt (Scott naturally
> doesn't like him to become part of the MOQ)...
>
> Scott:
> I hold that if one accepts Barfield's thesis, then the MOQ has to be
> modified, and the way it has to be modified is how it characterizes the
> fourth level, and, related to that, in how it characterizes intellect. In
> the first place, the fourth level is not the birth of the intellect, but the
> movement of intellect from outside to inside. But even that is seeing it
> from our modernist point of view -- prior to this movement, there wasn't an
> inside, and so it is correct to say, a la SOL, that the fourth level
> coincides with the S/O divide (but whether that is S/O[1] and S/O[2] has to
> be dealt with -- see below). So the first thing to note is that intellect
> existed prior to the fourth level. Odysseus was not a genius. Rather the
> genius of Athena worked through him, and that is still what 'genius' meant
> until the modern age (after about 1500 CE). So here I agree with Mike's
> answer to Ham: the S/O divide is in some sense fundamental to the fourth
> level, but it is not absolutely fundamental. Barfield shows how it came to
> be as an evolution of consciousness, which implies that further evolution of
> consciousness may move us beyond it. And indeed, Barfield calls this further
> evolution moving to the state of "final participation". (As an aside,
> Barfield in his preface to the second edition of "Saving the Appearances"
> makes clear that this is not some Absolutely Final state, just the end of
> this adventure into S/O -- what happens after that who knows.)
>
> So in response to Mike's question about whether intellect is necessarily
> subjective, I would say no.One might say that it is for us (stuck in the
> fourth level as we are), but Barfield has something to say on this as well.
> Insofar as one might speak of an individual at the third level (there was at
> least awareness of a body), it is only with the fourth level that one has,
> in Sam's phrase, autonomous individuals, where, as Mike said to Ham, one has
> "my" thoughts, rather than Athena's. However, autonomy is, with us, only
> partial, which is to say, we have some control, but not complete control. We
> are still, in spite of 2500 years of admonishment, still to some extent,
> often to a very large extent, at the mercy of our passions and our
> unexamined beliefs. (Here the MOQ is spot on: those calls for "spontaneity"
> among many hippies and New Age types are as likely as not a fall back into
> the social or biological -- intellectual spontaneity is another matter.)
> What Barfield says (following Rudolf Steiner) is that the movement from our
> current state to final participation is our own responsibility, and that the
> means to do this is through strengthening our autonomy, which means
> strengthening our intellect. As I see it, this is what meditation is about:
> disciplining our intellect so that it is not directed by existing SQ --
> fostering detachment, in other words. (Another aside: this does NOT mean
> that I think intellect can understand the mystical. But the whole relation
> between this view of intellect and the mystical is more than I want to go
> into now.)
>
> A perfectly detached intellect, I think, would not be subjective. The sense
> of self arises when our will, including our intellectual will (e.g., trying
> to solve puzzles), gets frustrated. In pre-intellectual days, this wouldn't
> happen, since people didn't think of themselves as autonomous at all. So we
> are in an in-between state, neither wholly controlled nor wholly autonomous,
> and that is why from the beginning of the fourth level there has been the
> stress on isolating the intellect from the passions. So, as to whether we
> are talking about S/O[1] or [2], I would say, both. S[1] includes the
> passions (feeling and will), but nobody thought to make a metaphysics out of
> it until the last perception of what we now call subjectivity was driven out
> of nature (after 1500 CE). But from the outset, there was the admonishment
> to
> establish the S/O[2] divide, which is to say that freedom arises by learning
> to treat all actual objects of thought as objects (not self). For example,
> to uncover and question all beliefs, to avoid using feelings as
> justification for actions, and so on. In "dynamic/static" terms, this would
> amount to freeing the intellect from all static bounds, which is to say,
> dynamic intellect is "pure" intellect (completely detached from all SQ).
>
> Hence, this is why I see self-transformation as being a matter of working on
> our intellect, rather than trying to move beyond it. And this is my
> difference with SOL: while the SOL says that intellect is the S/O divide, I
> (following Barfield), say that intellect was before the S/O divide and will
> be after it is overcome. Mathematics is a case in our current experience of
> intellect with no S/O divide.
>
> Finally, on the intellect/intelligence distinction, I see none. When a
> materialist speaks of "nature's intelligence" s/he is speaking somewhat
> tongue-in-cheek, and I think the same can be said of the way Bo speaks of
> it. As I see it, to say of some process that it is intelligent is
> meaningless unless there is value involved, and to say there is value
> involved is meaningless unless there is awareness involved, and a process
> that involves choosing among possibilities based on estimating consequences.
> That is, there is intellect involved.
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