From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 12:34:41 BST
Hi Bo
> "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."
[Bo:]
According to this intellect's value is "collection and manipulation of
symbols ...etc." consequently that which the symbols "stand for" -
experience - are the levels below (intellect).
[Paul:]
This is correct. This is what Pirsig means when he says:
"Intellectuality occurs when these customs as well as biological and
inorganic patterns are designated with a sign that stands for them and
these signs are manipulated independently of the patterns they stand
for. "Intellect" can then be defined very loosely as the level of
independently manipulable signs." [Letter to Paul]
[Bo:]
Thus intellect becomes
excepted from experience - the subject observing objective reality
exactly as in SOM!!!
[Paul:]
No. It is experience that creates patterns at all levels. There is no
detached observer existing prior to or outside of experience. You seem
to start with a subject experiencing an object; this is incorrect
according to the MOQ. Both are in the experience.
"The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas, which
produce what we know as matter." [Lila's Child Note 67, p213]
The intellect is the manipulation of symbols in a way that is
independent of the particular experience assigned to other levels that
created them. With these symbols, hierarchies of structured thought
[static intellectual patterns] are created to organise experience in a
way which is not given by or inherent in each particular experience [at
other levels] but in a way that follows "rules of its own". These
structures remember/reconstruct a past and predict/construct a future.
The critical MOQ assertion is that this is all done with "symbols" or
"facts" that are preselected to fulfil a harmony and are not related to
anything fixed in a "deep" structured reality such as a
"thing-in-itself", they stand for fleeting experience [patterns of
values]. E.g. Quality creates patterns of inorganic values; the
intellect creates "mountains".
"Value, the leading edge of reality, is no longer an irrelevant offshoot
of structure. Value is the predecessor of structure. It's the
preintellectual awareness that gives rise to it. Our structured reality
is preselected on the basis of value, and really to understand
structured reality requires an understanding of the value source from
which it's derived." [ZMM Ch.24]
In its own vocabulary, the MOQ itself is an intellectual structure of
symbols organising experience into four levels to fulfil a harmony
including a symbol standing for a central undefined source of new
"symbols" which will need assimilating into new and better harmonies. As
Mark points out, this "intellectual harmony" has been called many things
- "ratio", "logic", "meter", "measure". Some of these things are
starting to hit bum notes, so along come "complementarity", "islands of
logic" etc.
The dichotomies [subject-object, mind-matter] emerging from Greek
structures of thought expressed a harmony found in dividing reality at
the border between what the MOQ calls biological and social patterns.
The limited freedom of preference that can be observed at the inorganic
level lends itself well to the hypothesis of an independent external
reality as assumed by scientific materialism.
"...the MOQ says that the idea that matter comes first is a high quality
idea!" [Lila's Child note 67 p.214]
[Bo:]
As I see it (intellect) should be defined as the
symbols/experience divide itself (S/O);
[Paul:]
Sadly, it seems that I have misunderstood your "solution". All you have
actually done is replace subject/object with symbol/experience and have
still left them both in one level and thus as a self-contained reality.
I thought you had accepted that this was unnecessary. How naïve :-(
[Bo:]
As emanates from my "solution" post it is my conviction that Pirsig
intended intellect to be exactly that.
[Paul:]
Except that in 2003 he explains further what he means by "intellectual
level" in the letter I have just posted. So it is my conviction that his
"intention" is clearly stated throughout Lila's Child and is still the
same now.
[Bo:]
And that he (in 1993 shortly after
LILA) saw a conformity with Jaynes' idea of language (voices)
becoming thoughts, and the birth of the intellectual level, if so we
clearly see the "mechanism", but I won't repeat all that.
[Paul:]
I like the language-thought transition although it looks like I may have
misunderstood what you meant there as well. Your conversation with Platt
looked promising but I think I'll read Julian Jaynes and see how it fits
for myself for now.
Cheers
Paul
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