From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 19:00:05 BST
In a message dated 9/30/03 3:44:45 PM GMT Daylight Time,
paulj.turner@ntlworld.com writes:
> Hi Mark
>
> [Mark:]
> While language and thinking about anything is intellect; and so
> developed at an indeterminate point in the course of human evolution,
> the Greeks, with their abstract interest in geometry and maths developed
> truth as an immortal principle - the intellectual aesthetic of ratio and
> proportion for example.
>
> [Paul:]
> Yes, a new level of patterns that behave according to new "rules". As I
> see it, relationships between symbols [concepts] define intellect. The
> MOQ adds to this "definition" that value ultimately creates these
> relationships.
>
> We may consider different manifestations of the value that creates these
> relationships. A primary manifestation of the relationships between
> symbols created and stored in the intellect seems to be the symbolic
> ORGANISATION or STRUCTURE of experience. The static patterns of
> intellect may be built up by analogy from the very first relationships
> created at the beginning of the intellect, particular to a society
> making different associations between patterns. This development may be
> a continuation of a more practical organisation of experience by means
> of social patterns of ritual.
>
> "He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos relationship went,
> maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cavemen are usually depicted
> as hairy, stupid creatures who don't do much, but anthropological
> studies of contemporary primitive tribes suggest that stone age people
> were probably bound by ritual all day long. There's a ritual for
> washing, for putting up a house, for hunting, for eating and so on - so
> much so that the division between 'ritual' and 'knowledge' becomes
> indistinct. In cultures without books ritual seems to be a public
> library for teaching the young and preserving common values and
> information." [LILA, p.442/443]
>
> Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may be that of
> DERIVING ASSUMPTIONS from the social description of experience. Poems
> and stories recalling important events are a form of describing
> experience in specific terms. However, such descriptions may express a
> common narrative carrying a society's primary assumptions about
> experience and the way the world is.
>
> Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may then be the
> EXPLANATION of experience. An explanation seeks to elucidate an
> underlying relationship between patterns of experience, deduced from the
> organising and descriptive relationships described above. The deductions
> are therefore based on primary assumptions about the way the world is.
> Importantly, the MOQ says that the explanations are "preselected" on
> their value from what may be an infinite number of possibilities.
>
> Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may be the
> PREDICTION of experience. From explanations, hypothetical predictions
> can be made about an experience that hasn't happened yet. These
> predictions form the basis of experiments that are imaginatively created
> in the mind and are subsequently the basis of all science and
> technology.
>
> In an evolutionary context, one can say that when a new symbol or
> relationship [in any of the manifestations described above] between
> symbols is formed, and it is better than what previously existed, then
> that is a Dynamic advance.
>
> Of course, I'm still thinking this through so don't hesitate to put me
> right!
>
> [Mark:]
> Today, when a builder uses his/her plumb line to check his/her walls'
> accord with gravity, he/she says the wall is 'true.' But that makes a
> good wall because its not going to be in danger of falling down - the
> wall is true to itself and in harmony with its environment.
>
> The Egyptians built the pyramids, and they had the intellect to do that
> well using geometric methods. But the Greeks went further and raised
> geometry to an art and adopted its methods of discernment into other
> areas of enquiry - an intellectual culture - reason.
>
> [Paul:]
> Yes, the Greeks seemed to ask "why" a wall should be better if it is
> built in a certain way. The ratio and geometry that was abstracted
> stands for what was previously "felt" to be good and could then be
> manipulated independently of social, biological and inorganic experience
> such as building.
>
> [Mark:]
> For me, the disturbing problem with that burst of intellectual dynamic
> was to establish reason as the primary intellectual stamp of an
> intellectual society; but if we see reason as art, then it should be
> tempered with the understanding that truth is a species of Quality -
> something the East understands better than the West perhaps?
>
> [Paul:]
> Yes. It seems the Oriental cultures didn't place what Northrop calls the
> "theoretic component" higher than the "aesthetic component" as was done
> in the West. They also kept hold of the non-intellectual understanding
> which seems to play a huge part in Oriental culture.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
Thanks Paul,
I like all this - it's good to read some good solid MoQ enquiry. Dynamic
stuff.
I like the relationships you are exploring between patterns of social and
intellectual value. And i shall find myself thinking about what you are saying a
great deal over the coming days!
Cheers,
Mark
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