From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 17:23:14 GMT
Dear Wim:
> You wrote 20 Feb 2003 10:07:15 -0500:
> 'For humans, social patterns by themselves can't find food. It takes
> thinking, planning. Unlike primates, humans have to reason to survive. ...
> So Pirsig's statement about intellect being used early on to find food,
> detect danger and defeat enemies supports my contention that what separates
> man from beast is his ability to put two and two together, not some herding
> instinct, copycat behavior or reliance on tooth and claw.'
>
> Does that imply that according to you man is separated from beast by the
> distinction between the intellectual and social levels rather than by the
> distinction between the social and biological levels? I can agree with that
> if you mean by 'man' homo sapiens and not the earlier hominids.
Yes, I do mean homo sapiens.
> Maybe you could agree that for hominids (not yet man, more than anthropoid
> apes) social patterns of value -the passing on of cultures consisting of
> patterns of unthinking behavior between generations and the differentiation
> of these cultures by adaptation to different environments- may have given
> them enough of an advantage over anthropoid apes to be more successful? If
> you don't agree, you effectively skip the social level from between the
> biological and the intellectual levels. 'Herding instinct', 'copycat
> behavior' and 'reliance on tooth and claw' are products of the biological
> level.
I'm no expert on early hominids, but I think Pirsig makes it clear that
when he refers to the social level he's talking about humans.
> I may have described not clearly enough in my 18 Feb 2003 23:01:28 +0100
> e-mail what distinguished early hominids (who had a herding instinct and
> exhibited copycat behavior) from anthropoid apes (who also had a herding
> instinct and exhibited copycat behavior), but I did so elsewhere. Their
> stronger inclination towards curiosity and mimicry created a dim
> consciousness of 'belonging' to the group they herded with and a feeling
> for and drive for 'status'. It was the preferential copying of behavior
> from others 'belonging' to the same group and with higher 'status' that
> created 'culture' and 'societies' that stayed recognizably the same over
> generations. On the one hand these could adapt to different environmental
> circumstances, e.g. when groups of hominids migrated through different
> ecosystems or had to escape adverse climatological conditions, (the Dynamic
> aspect). On the other hand these social patterns of value could preserve
> 'best practices', the 'know-how' of how to survive under specific
> conditions (the static aspect). No thinking was needed. Better patterns of
> copied behavior survived better than worse patterns of behavior, WITHOUT
> being latched genetically either.
You may be right. But I see very little difference between what you
describe as hominid behavior and that of chimps. Admittedly I'm no
expert on subject. It does seem, however, that how early man was
different from apes, except for walking upright and other physical
differences, is largely speculative.
> You wrote 24 Nov 2002 20:00:03 -0500:
> '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."' You wrote 20 Feb
> 2003 10:07:15 -0500: 'The key word [determining that a terrorist belongs at
> the biological level] is [terrorist] "practices" which make a terrorist a
> terrorist, a person who intentionally and randomly kills without warning.'
>
> And 'sexual PRACTICES' DON'T determine that nearly everyone belongs to the
> biological level??? Don't terrorists have intellect too???
Yes, sex is biological behavior. Intellectual types do engage in sex, or
so I'm told. :-) When they do, it's biological behavior. Likewise, intellects
who engage in terrorism exhibit biological behavior.
> Taken loosely I agree when you 'break the levels down into the world of
> ideas (intellectual), the world of human associations (social), the world
> of animals and plants (biological) and the world of particles, chemicals
> and minerals (inorganic).' But categorizing levels by some 'things' that
> are easily recognizable as elements of a lot of the patterns of value at
> that level ('ideas' at the intellectual level, 'relations' at the social
> level, 'animals and plants' at the biological level and 'particles,
> chemicals and minerals' at the inorganic level) inevitably runs you into
> problems. According to you every human artifact 'is' an intellectual
> pattern of value (I'd say is an element of an intellectual pattern of
> value), BECAUSE it results from ideas. (I think that among hominids
> artifacts did not result from ideas, but that is the former subject.) What
> about human associations that result form ideas then? Like ... terrorist
> organizations? Do you call them 'intellectual', because they 'result from
> ideas'? Or do you call them 'social', because they belong to the world of
> human associations? Or do you call them 'biological', because they consist
> of terrorists who by their 'terrorist practices' are defined as
> 'biological'?
Human organizations are, by definition, social level phenomena. They
"have an intelligence of their own" as Pirsig explains in Chap. 17. The
"ideas" behind terrorist organizations are not intellectual but social
(religious) conventions. They become biological when they engage in
torture, murder and other barbarous practices.
> As long as you mix up 'patterns of value' and 'things', you'll never get a
> clear classification.
Yes, there's always that danger. "Things" is a broad term. How many
things in a thing? As many as you want. :-)
> By the way, you wrote in the same thread in your e-mail about 'Pirsig's
> idea that [an idea] "is the collection and manipulation of symbols, created
> in the brain, that stand for patterns of experience"' Pirsig did not define
> the term 'idea' with this quote from 'Lila's Child' however, but the term
> 'intellectual level' (which he equates with 'consciousness' and 'mind').
Well, I don't see how you can have an idea without a consciousness or
a mind. Seems to me the three go pretty much hand in hand.
Do I detect in your questions a more fundamental disagreement than
just about MOQ divisions?
Platt
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