From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 20:44:08 BST
Hi Paul,
> Platt:
> So would it is be fair to say that in your opinion another name for the
> intellectual level is the "idea level," the level where all ideas,
> concepts, thoughts, opinions, beliefs, theories, doctrines, creeds,
> etc., belong, regardless of their origin in time or individual?
> Paul:
> Yes, although the ideas one has are culturally "sanctioned" through
> social learning and relationships and obviously the environment that
> contributes to your experience.
OK. The intellectual level is the idea level as seen through our
cultural "glasses." Thus, the ideas presented in the MOQ are similarly
"colored" or "distorted" by our socio-intellectual patterns, i.e., our
mythos. There's really no such thing as a discrete intellectual level.
Have I got your interpretation right?
> Paul:
> I think the best description of the mythos is collection of intellectual
> patterns.
That seems to jibe with the above interpretation.
> Platt:
> Then I take you believe the intellectual level emerged with the first
> human,
> Paul:
> I would just say that the first intellectual pattern constitutes the
> beginning of the intellectual level.
If ideas are intellectual patterns, then the beginning of the
intellectual level occurred simultaneously with the first idea which
emerged long before the Greeks wouldn't you say?
Platt:
> and that Lila herself had intellectual quality like everybody
> else. Right?
> Paul:
> I would say that Lila participates in intellectual patterns when she
> thinks. However, I think Phaedrus clearly believes she has no sense of
> intellectual quality. The elegance of a theory is beyond her. Quality,
> to Lila, is sensed biologically.
I'll buy that. It becomes less clear, however, if you believe, as I
think Pirsig does, that intellectual patterns are patterns of value.
Then you would have to say she participates in intellectual values
(thinking, manipulation of symbols, etc.), but her values at that level
are low compared to her values at the biological level.
I sometimes picture the MOQ as a grid having a vertical scale, the
moral hierarchy, intersected at each level by a horizontal line, a
scale of value from 1 (low) to 10 (high). Lila, for example, would be a
1 at the intellectual level, a 3 at the social, an 8 at the biological
and a 10 at the inorganic. Rigel would be 5-8-3-10. Phaedrus 9-3-4-10.
Of course, these assignments on my part will be different than yours or
others due to different life experiences. :-)
Platt
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