From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Nov 04 2005 - 05:33:32 GMT
Greetings, Scott --
> Actually, I think I'm the only one around here who says unequivocally that
> there is intellect and language outside the human context. This does NOT
> imply "a strong aversion to individuality", however. See my 11/2 post in
the
> "Quality, subjectivity, and the 4th level" thread for why it doesn't.
My quarrel isn't with you, Scott, or with anyone holding similar views.
It's the idea itself that bothers me, and I blame Pirsig for positing a
euphemistic paradigm for reality that was never intended to be a
metaphysical ontology. As Michael noted on 10/30:
> Thanks to the likes of Pirsig, we can dream up metaphysics
> in which the subject/object divide is not fundamental.
> We can spend as long as we like thinking about a time
> and a place in which the subject/object divide never existed.
> But we're still thinking as subjects, and any attempt to wipe
> subjectivity from one's life entirely would be a regression,
> not a progression.
I've read your 11/2 post, minus Barfield's alleged insights, and encountered
the same "levelism" problems I had with Mike. Bear in mind that, as strange
as it may seem to you, I was unaware until quite recently that these levels
are to be regarded as phases of evolution, rather than divisions of
existence. I was particularly struck by two statements you made about Level
4, the first having to do with the stages of intellectual "development", and
the second concerning a hypothetical proposition.
> 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 ...
If I understand this statement correctly, you are asserting that intellect
predates subjectivity. Am I to assume that intellect was hanging around (in
space somewhere?) prior to (perhaps) the Age of Enlightenment, before which
time there was no subjective consciousness? How, exactly, do you define
"intellect" in this non-human sense? Is it the body of knowledge from
Archimides to Stephen Hawkins? Is it the unactualized "potential" for human
thought? Or, is it pure Quality, as yet undifferentiated into its conscious
components? (I hope you don't think my questions are facetious -- I
really want to understand this concept.)
The other strange statement refers to a hypothetical "detached" intellect.
You describe detachment as "disciplining our intellect so that it is not
directed by existing SQ", and you relate this mode of experience to mystical
meditation.
> 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.
I'm sure you have good reasons to conceptualize intellect in this fashion,
but it won't come as a surprise that I find your entire premise illogical.
I don't know precisely what era in human history you regard as the
"pre-intellectual days", but it is inconceivable to me that even the most
primitive Neanderthal lacked the capacity to be aware of himself. Did he
not have problems to solve? Did he not know they were HIS problems?
But what troubles me most is the concept -- espoused by the majority in this
forum -- that something called Intellect exists, wholly or in part,
independent of either consciousness or the human individual. As I've said
before, unless one uses the term in the uncommon literary sense, e.g., as a
cultural movement or body of knowledge, "intellect" infers cognizant
awareness. And cognizant awareness is proprietary to the individual self.
Any attribution of intellect to an insentient entity -- and I include
"artificial intelligence" in that category -- is incomprehensible to me.
It's possible, of course, that your explanation will throw new light on this
subject by defining intellect as some extraordinary supernatural phenomenon.
To date, however, your argument for a non-human intellect is as implausible
to me as my concept of proprietary awareness seems to be for you.
If there's a solution to this impasse, I'll be looking for it in your
response.
Thanks, Scott.
Regards,
Ham
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