From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Apr 19 2003 - 04:06:45 BST
Wim,
You wrote:
> It seems a bit inconsistent to me to say that Barfield dinstinguishes the
> social and intellectual levels better than Pirsig does, to accept
Barfield's
> dating of the transition at about 500 BC and then to say that 'there was
> always an intellectual level'.
Yes it is inconsistent. I should have said "there was always intelligence"
given that I have been characterizing the "intellectual level" as the S/O
divide. I could also say "there was always language" in that I hold
everything to be word-like in character, rather than thing-like. So to say
that the intellectual level shows up around 500 BC is to say that at that
time intelligence took on S/O form in human beings. (More correctly, started
to take on. Following Barfield, this took until about 1500 AD to fully
complete.) The significance is that only with the S/O divide could people
think about things, and be aware of doing so. Prior to that, intelligence
was from the gods. The important thing here is to say, though, that this is
the way consciousness worked then (though we replace "gods" with God or
Quality), and not a mistaken notion of pre-fourth level people.
> Do you still have problems with dating that 'beginning' of the
intellectual
> level at the origin of homo sapiens (50.000 - 100.000 years ago) and with
> identifying the distinction described by Barfield with a step in
> intellectual evolution and not with the step from social to intellectual
> level?
Yes. in that I don't accept the conventional view of the origin and
development of homo sapiens. Certainly the development of physical forms can
be traced, but what people thought or didn't think prior to written records
I consider to be pure speculation based on a faulty premise: that basic
perceptual conciousness doesn't change. That is, it is assumed that minds
worked the same as they do now (once brains got to a certain state), but
long ago people were just more stupid. Barfield show how this assumption is
just wrong. (In any case, I consider that all levels are guided by
intelligence, so it "started" with the first existence of anything, though
it is of course meaningless to speak of there being a "first", sub specie
aeternitate). So the fourth level can legitimately be called the
"intellectual level" in that it is only with the evolution of consciousness
starting about 500 BC that a person can say "my intelligence".
>
> I won't say that Pirsig was very clear, not in 'Lila' at least. His
> annotations in 'Lila's Child' provide essential additional clarity. My
> distinction between the social and intellectual levels as unthinking
> habitual (but not DNA encoded) behavior versus conscious motivations for
> action seems definitive enough to me, however.
Conscious motivations would be another characteristic, I agree. But this is
made possible because only with the change does one think of oneself as a
moral agent, and to do that one has to be able to think of "oneself"
simpliciter. (I would agree with Sam at least in that discovering one's
individuality is also a necessary concomitant characteristic of the fourth
level.)
- Scott
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