From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 22:16:23 BST
Hello everyone
>From: skutvik@online.no
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: Re: MD Dealing with S/O
>Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 07:24:12 +0200
>
>Hi Dan.
>
>27 Sep. you wrote:
> > I've noticed several members have objected to the definition of the
> > intellectual level offered by RMP in Lila's Child. Since I fail to see
> > a problem I haven't responded. I looked up the definition of intellect
> > in the dictionary (The American Heritage Dictionary) and this is what
> > I found:
>
>Maybe my "solution" post have made it clearer for you how the
>quandary developed. If not ...well to start with your last.
Hi Bo
Yes I understand how the quandary has developed but I still don't understand
why.
>
> > The definitions and the synonyms seem to be a perfect fit with Robert
> > Pirsig's annotations in Lila's Child. RMP has said that he didn't
> > define the intellectual level in Lila, and ZMM doesn't pertain
> > directly to the MOQ, so I don't see why there is an uneasiness over
> > the LC annotations or why a different formulation of intellect is
> > needed. I know you've been over all this many times, but could you
> > explain your objections to me in simple terms using definitions we can
> > all agree on?
>
>The dictionaries pose no difficulties.:
>
> > a. The ability to learn and reason; the capacity for knowledge and
> > understanding. b. The ability to think abstractly or profoundly.
>
>Right, it's to think abstractly ..to reason. The ability to distinguish
>between thinking and what the thoughts are about. Abstract implies
>something separated from something else. Shortly the subject/object
>divide.
>
>But even if ZMM doesn't pertain directly to the MOQ, SOM does and it
>postulates that thoughts belong to a subjective (mind) realm, while
>that what thoughts are about belong to an objective realm. Thus when
>Pirsig in LC goes on to define intellect as "mind" intellect no longer
>remains the ability to divide the subject from the object, but becomes
>subjectivity itself. And THAT is something else.
From the narrow viewpoint of SOM, yes. But I think the MOQ offers a more
expansive viewpoint. Of course intellect is subjective but it is not
subjectivity itself. For example, in Robert Pirsig's hot stove experiment,
he says the mystic will tend to jump off the stove faster than the
intellectual. Intellectual patterns of value tend to take us farther away
from reality instead of bringing us closer.
>
>But the SO Metaphysics is to be rejected, i.e: the mind/matter divide
>is invalid and then to introduce "mind" as the intellectual level, brings
>difficulties. ....for the MOQ at least which is supposed to be non-
>somish! Like below
>
> > "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."
>
>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). Thus intellect becomes
>excepted from experience - the subject observing objective reality
>exactly as in SOM!!! As I see it (intellect) should be defined as the
>symbols/experience divide itself (S/O); A new static value ...which it is
>in the MOQ!
I think Mr. Pirsig answers this in many places in Lila's Child. I will quote
two of them. Annotation #59: "All objects are in fact mental constructs
based on experience. ... The existence of collective masses of electrons can
be inferred from experience and there is every reason to think they exist
independently of the mind."
Annotation #67: "The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces
ideas, which produce what we know as matter. The scientific community that
has produced Complementarity almost invariably presumes that matter comes
first and produces ideas. However, as if to further the confusion, the MOQ
says that the idea that matter comes first is a high quality idea!"
It seems to me that when you define intellect as the divide between
symbols/experience itself that you're presuming (as the scientific community
that produced Complementarity) that the existence of an object (which is
presumed from experience) is indeed independent of mind, and that intellect
is the dividing point. I don't think this is what Mr. Pirsig is saying. The
existence of an object independent of mind is a high quality idea and while
SOM presumes this, the MOQ states that this may be so and this may be not
necessarily be so. The MOQ gives us a more expanded viewpoint.
>
>As emanates from my "solution" post it is my conviction that Pirsig
>intended intellect to be exactly that. 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.
I too enjoyed Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind, and have no problem with it. I think what Jaynes was
pointing out was the possibility that our ancestors actually heard, in a
quite literal fashion, the voices of the gods, and this was due to in part
to a biological difference in their brains compared to ours. However, the
book was written some 30 years ago, before many of the recent discoveries
that geneticists have made. Earlier this year I read in several of the
scientific journals I subscribe to about the discovery of a language gene
which according to researchers evolved some 50,000 to 75,000 years ago and
quickly swept through the population of humans alive at that time. There
were also articles concerning a related evolutionary bottleneck possibly
tied to a super-volcano eruption in Indochina (Toba) in the same time range.
So if we tie language to the birth of intellect, we may have to go
considerably farther back in time than does Jaynes. I think the MOQ would
say that there are inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual aspects
to language and these aspects are continually evolving towards something
better.
Thank you
Dan
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