From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Fri Jul 04 2003 - 09:35:44 BST
Hi Jonathan and Platt.
On 3 July you wrote:
> To link this to an earlier discussion, I believe that intellect
> started evolving beginning with the Big Bang, which established the
> potential for everything we know today. At what stage particular
> intellectual patterns become identifiable is itself very vague. What
> Pirsig says on this that a particular type of thought (SO) became
> identifiable in ancient Greece, and the use of REASON to govern
> society became dominant after WW1.
> Bo, does this make my position clearer?
Yes, it does, but such an intellect even Squonk would balk at :-) I believe
that you mean 'intelligence', 'mind' or 'awareness' - and as such a copy of
Quality - one of those concepts from which a similar metaphysics can be
made.
PLATT:
> This raises the question: Did aborigines prior to the influences of
> Western civilization think? Or did they survive by mystic intuition
> alone? Jonathan says yes, they did think and thus participated in
> intellectual level patterns. Bo says no. Going along with Pirsig's
> "collection and manipulation of symbols" definition of thinking, I say
> yes.
Er ..I did not say 'no' from my premises? My position is that stone age
humans were as capable as ourselves, but had not reached the stage of
asking for an objective explanation of observed facts as different from
subjective opinion ...which is a new capability of course.
Does "aborigines prior to the influence of Western civilization" mean pure
social level existence? If so, according to you, they they did think (intuitively
or mystically perhaps) and thus "participated in intellectual level patterns".
Thus intellectual patterns predates the intellectual level and that can't be
according to my logic.
NB! It can be in the sense that the next level starts as a pattern of the former
before it "goes off on a purpose of it own", but the higher level's purpose is to
control its parent and I find no coherence in the manipulation-of-symbols-
intellect. Surely Q-intellect very much wants to control HOW Q-society
manipulates symbols, but manipulation itself?
Look to Sam's excellent piece about "thinking". It's a slippery slope that
leads us into the biological realm (and beyond as Jonathan demonstrates)
and makes me say that about a 'Metaphysics of Thinking' ...a 'Metaphysics
of Symbols' even.
What are your reflections on this?
Bo
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