From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 13:27:45 BST
Hi All
Thanks to Wim for forwarding my comments to the "Awareness Hierarchy"
thread. I said to Wim (privately) that I would not subscribe to the MD any
more, but I find the following so interesting that I break with my principles.
Those who find me conceited - as if my presence/opion counts - please bear
with me.
What's on my mind is (as always) the intellectual level. It seems like the
discussion has always circled around it, The one remaining "aborigine" (Hi
Platt) will remember how early it turned up in our discussion, and the
"middle-aged" will also remember how often it has been the topic, and
everybody will agree that we haven't reached a conclusion.
But at least two alternatives have emerged represented by their respective
quotes. David who presented them doesn't explicitly say so, but I take his
refusal of Squonk's mind-intellect to mean that he supports the view that it
came into existence along with the Greeks (which in ZAMM is described as
the emergence of the SOM) i.e: a subject/object-intellect.
Before entering the said quotes let me point to the debate between Squonk
and Scott R. over the same matter. I cite from a recent post by Scott and if
he says what I believe he says ........
> The S/O form is (in my opinion) the DQ/SQ tension of current
> individuals.
Yes, intellect as the highest level "borders on" the dynamic beyond,
consequently the tension is between the S/O (mind/matter) world view and
the dynamism that wants to escape it.
> So what I am proposing is that it (the S/O form) be seen
> that way, and not as a metaphysical absolute. To do that one needs to
> study it, not just ignore it. and I see the shift in 500 BC as vital
> to understanding it.
Right, intellect is not SO -M, merely the S/O divide, and that development
took place with the Greeks!
I would of course have liked Scott to stand firmer against Squonk's idea of
an ancient "mind-intellect" that just spawned a SOM around Homer's time,
but at least Scott sees that - in that case - "....all static patterns are in some
sense "intellectual"". Which is good old SOM's "everything is in the mind"
and bye to the MOQ.
Now to the bone of contention. David from the 15th.:
> Who thinks the folllowing two Pirsigisms are contradictory? Who thinks only
> one of them can be correct? Not me. I think that only a misunderstanding of
> one or the other would lead a person to conclude that we are here faced with
> a difficult choice. The trick is to take the LC clarifications as just that.
> Pirsig is not saying anything different in LC and his comments are not
> intended to undo any part of the MOQ as we find it in Lila. The best way to
> discover the correct reading of any isolated quote is to put it within the
> context of everything else he says about the topic and the MOQ in general.
> > PIRSIG from chapter 30
> > "Philosophers usually present their ideas as sprung from "nature" or
> > sometimes from"God", but Phadreus thought neither of these was completely
> > accurate. The logical order of things which the philosophers study is
> > derived from the "mythos".The mythos is the social culture and the rhetoric
> > which the culture must invent before philosophy becomes possible. Most of
> > this religious talk is nonsense, of course, but nonsense or not, it is the
> > PARENT of our modern scientific talk. This "mythos over logos" thesis agreed
> > with the MOQ's assertion that intellectual static patterns of quality are
> > built up out of social static quality. Digging back into ancient Greek
> > history, to the time when this mythos-to logos transition was taking
> > place...."
PIRSIG (from LILA'S CHILD):
> > 'For purposes of MOQ precision, let's say that the
> > intellectual level is the same as mind. It is the
> > collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the
> > brain, that stand for patterns of experience.'
Heeding DMB's wise words I still have problems with reconciling these two
statements. Symbols and manipulation thereof soon assumes the same role
as mind of SOM .... which was what launched Phaedrus on the Quality
quest in the first place to rid the world of its impossibilities.
In the above quote (and throughout the entire LILA book) Pirsig points out
that intellect is out of social value, but the LC comment sounds uncannily
like intellect is out of brain. What is not symbols if starting down that lane?
Sense impressions in the brain are electric pulses which "symbolize" reality
"out there" (patterns of inorganic experience) thus the biological level is
symbols too.
------If not the "manipulation" term is the key? It indicates a subject having
an objective view of things - able to shuffle around with the symbols; to think
abstractly.. I'll try to develop this in my next instalment.
Bo (Skutvik)
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