From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 13:15:56 BST
Hi Wim
[Wim:]
Now that you have decided to participate in this e-discussion by having
a
letter passed on, I hope you also follow (or have reported back to you)
the
replies. An opinion backed by celebrity without 'listening' for replies
may
be even worse than a Papal Bull. The pope probably DOES show interest in
how
the opinions he expresses 'ex cathedra' are appreciated by his flock.
[Paul:]
May I add a little perspective here? Perhaps, by not posting my letter
along with his reply, I didn't make something clear. This is a reply to
a letter in which I specifically mentioned that I participated in this
discussion group and in which I asked questions about our discussions
which he tried to answer...
"As you will be aware from your contribution to the Lila's Child
publication, there are many different interpretations of the MOQ as
presented in ZMM and Lila. However, no topic causes as many differing
interpretations as the attempt to define the static intellectual level
of value. The lack of consensus relating to this level has caused a
variety of alternative conceptions of the MOQ to be offered to the
forum. It is my belief that the alternatives are offered because of a
failure to understand the definition of the static intellectual level
that you have provided - the intellect is the collection and
manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that stand for patterns
of experience.
The source of the "misunderstanding" seems to be the confusion over when
the static intellectual level is speculated to have emerged. Those who
offer alternative definitions to the one you provided in Lila's Child
insist that it is your understanding that there was no static
intellectual level until the Socratic period of Greece. To back this up,
there is a statement in Lila where Phaedrus speculates that in Homer's
time "..evolution had not yet transcended the social level into the
intellectual..". As others argue, it is also stated in Lila that the
intellect has primitive functions such as helping a society find food,
detect danger and destroy enemies and that only when the intellect had
preserved and sufficiently improved society did it go off on its own
purpose. The latter argument entails an intellectual level existing
prior to Homer, perhaps for many thousands of years, but importantly
prior to the Greeks." [Paul Turner to Robert Pirsig]
Therefore I think you are incorrect to say that "now that you have
decided to participate in this e-discussion by having a letter passed
on". Your comments really reflect upon myself - first for writing to
him, and second for posting his reply. I apologise if some "rules of
discussion group etiquette" have been broken but it is entirely my doing
if they have. As a discussion group of intelligent people debating
difficult topics based on the work of Robert Pirsig, I thought the group
may be interested in and perhaps challenged by reading his contribution
to the debate about intellect.
If I hear any more from Mr. Pirsig I will be sure to hesitate before
sharing it with the forum if this is the kind of response it provokes in
some people. Maybe I should have passed the comments on as my own to see
the response but that would not have been right either. Maybe I should
have informed you that I was writing the letter in the first place, but
I wasn't sure if I would get a response, and in fact it took several
months to arrive.
However, whilst you are waiting for a reply, may I have a go at
answering some of your questions?
[Wim:]
Your next example, that's supposed to clear up the confusion of
'intellect'
and 'intellectual' likewise doesn't say anything about the intellectual
level either:
'Thus, though it may be assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the
Greeks
had intellect, it can be doubted that theirs was an intellectual
culture.'
[Paul:]
The full paragraph reads:
"Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," that
can mean thought about anything and the word, "intellectual," where
abstract thought itself is of primary importance. Thus, though it may be
assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect, it can
be doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture."
He is talking about the different general meanings of the word
"intellect" and how it can cause confusion with regards to the MOQ. He
goes on to define the MOQ use of "intellect" and "intellectual level"
later in the letter.
[Wim:]
You use it to suggest that 'having intellect' doesn't prove a presence
of
the intellectual level. 'Intellectual culture' seems to mean 'a culture
in
which "intellectuals" have an important role', however. So it is
essentially
about social titles and not defining the presence of the intellectual
level.
[Paul:]
I think it means that an intellectual culture exists when
"intellectuality" [which he goes on to define] plays an important role,
not when the majority of people in a culture read the Financial Times
and hold book review seminars.
I was pleased that he clarified the distinction between some general
meanings of the word "intellect" and the MOQ intellectual level, even
though it was not what I had been arguing for on the forum. Because of
my assumptions of what "thinking" meant regardless of time and place in
history, I [like yourself I believe] had decided that the intellectual
level began with "the first thought". If this is the case, I assumed
ancient Egyptians participated in the intellectual level. However, since
I received this reply, I've spent more time looking at historical
evidence from this period and in doing so I have let go of a lot of
preconceptions about what it was to be a human prior to the 3rd
millennia BC. I am really glad I did this.
I now understand more about what Scott and Bo have been talking about in
terms of volition being located "outside" of individual human control.
E.g. It has been convincingly argued by Julian Jaynes that consciousness
was learned socially when the control of "the gods" began to break down
as documented in the Iliad and the Vedas.
[Wim:]
I don't really see how clarity about the intellectual level is gained by
your next statement either:
'Just as every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all
inorganic
patterns are biological; and just as every social level is also
biological,
although not all biological patterns are social; so every intellectual
pattern is social although not all social patterns are intellectual.'
So every intellectual pattern of value is also an inorganic pattern of
value, like any opinion about the MoQ expressed on this list is also a
pattern in the memory parts of our computer hardware. The higher levels
add
extra complexity, but why are the levels discrete?
[Paul:]
I don't think it is about complexity alone, although diversity is
certainly part of it. I think they are discrete because they follow
completely independent "rules" to form completely different patterns.
You cannot reduce the intellectual patterns to the rules governing
inorganic, biological or social patterns. E.g. metaphysics is an
intellectual pattern of values. It may be described as a structure of
thought which is expressed in words, the meaning of which have to be
socially learned, spoken or written biologically and carried
inorganically in vibrations in the air and on a PC or ink and paper.
Without the existence of patterns at all levels below, there can be
nothing at the intellectual level. If you can't see the marks on paper
or hear the sound you won't "see" or "hear" the words but not all sounds
or images "carry" words, that is a socially learned pattern. If you
haven't learned to understand the words you can't begin to grasp the
philosophical ideas but not all learned skills involve the meaning of
words or symbolic thought.
[Wim:]
Why is an intellectual
pattern of value (so) different from a non-intellectual social pattern
of
value (or from a non-biological, non-social, non-intellectual inorganic
pattern of value for that matter) that it merits speaking about a
discrete
level?
[Paul:]
Because the intellectual level is symbols being manipulated without any
direct or immediate effect on the patterns that they stand for, whereas
although you could say that ritual dancing is "symbolic" of tribal
identity, socially learned dancing always involves the biological
movement of dancing. However, the intellectual symbol "dance" does not
require one to get up and start dancing to be able to manipulate it
along with other symbols into a structure of thought, such as an
anthropologist writing a thesis on tribal ritual.
It is also symbols being generated as abstract and "universal" symbols
from what was a particular or set of particular experiences.
[Wim:]
'"Intellect" can then be defined very loosely as the level of
independently
manipulable signs.' is less clear (because it is indeed only a 'loose'
definition) than your earlier definition from 'Lila's Child':
'the intellectual level is ... the collection and manipulation of
symbols,
created in the brain, that stand for patterns of experience.'
I doubt whether 'independently' is an essential addition. Is
manipulating a
mass meeting of people to kill all Jews with a speech about of 'racial
purity' less intellectual than writing a book about that concept? Or
'freedom' ...?
[Paul:]
The abstract concept of "racial purity" is an intellectual pattern of
values but it requires social patterns of authority and control and
biological might to begin killing people. This is exactly the point. The
concept of "racial purity", on its own, never killed anyone; it can be
formulated and manipulated within structures of thought independently of
the biological [or indeed social] patterns of race which it originally
designated. However, biological patterns have been killing biological
patterns and social rituals and conflicts have demanded the killing of
biological patterns long before any intellectual patterns evolved to
distinguish between genocide and global equality.
[Wim:]
The question when the intellectual level started should be answered
using
one's definition of the intellectual level.
[Paul:]
Agreed.
[Wim:]
Your suggestion that the
intellectual level started with some Greek philosopher (and
contemporaries
in Oriental cultures) and was absent among preceding Egyptians, in early
Biblical times and among primitive tribes today is not an answer to the
question when people started collecting and manipulating symbols,
however.
[Paul:]
Again, I had previously taken this stance, but in recent reading I can
see that I was imagining [perhaps in error] that people of this time
were like contemporary humans with a capacity to be "aware of" and "in
control of" what was going on "in their heads" and over a period of
time. However, they appear to have lived in a continuous present with no
conscious symbolic manipulation or narratization of individual lives
occurring at all, other than that dictated by "the gods" into epics and
songs.
[Wim:]
If a culture of a group of people is the sum total of the social and the
intellectual patterns of value in which they participate, then the
intellectual level starts with the first culture that doesn't consist
solely
of social patterns of value. It doesn't necessarily start with the first
individual that collects and manipulates symbols. Only if individuals
doing
so manage to pass that practice on others.
[Paul:]
I agree, but the conscious manipulation of symbols by individuals
doesn't seem to have occurred until around the time of Odyssey. Until
recently I, for one, did not appreciate the massive change in human
behaviour that seems to have occurred around this time.
[Wim:]
You last statement is both confusing (invoking all the confusions about
'intellect', 'intellectual level', 'intellectual' as noun,
'intellectual' as
adverb etc. that you sought to clarify) and paradoxical:
'for anyone who really wants to know what intellect is I think
definitions
are not the place to start. Since definitions are a part of the
intellectual
level the only person who will understand a definition of intellect is a
person who already is intellectual and thus has the answer before he
ever
asks.'
In a sense you DO have to start with a definition of the intellectual
level
to understand what it is. Only when you understand the definition you
will
know that you are an intellectual-that-also-happens-to-be-intellectual
(able
to manipulate symbols at this level of abstraction). Then you will also
recognize that definition as defining part of your 'self', your
participation in intellectual patterns of value.
In another sense knowing yourself as intellectual and understanding the
definition are two sides of the same coin. Whichever of the two you
start
with, you are doing essentially the same thing.
The answer is in the asking, but not before. An answer is unthinkable
without a preceding question.
[Paul:]
I think the point is that you can only really see the boundaries of
something from outside of it and you cannot get outside of intellect
with thought. However, I think that you can arrive at a workable
ostensive definition, which is what [I believe] Pirsig tries to do. I'm
thinking of the "analytic knife" in ZMM as an example.
Cheers
Paul
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