From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 16:40:38 BST
Hello and welcome back Wim.
(I'll have to cut your message as make it within limits, but you know
what you have written)
5 Oct. you wrote: (to Pirsig)
> 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 ........................snip
You point to the same intellect-before-the intellectual level quandary
that I raise.
> 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 ...........snip
Wim, here you misunderstand. The inorganic level is the base for life,
but not all elements are present in organisms . Even if they were the
discreteness is clear. Thus inorganic value is found under the
biological and social layers at the intellectual level.
> '"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 .....snip
That was a deep one! But I agree, symbol-manipulation is not
intellect. I would have liked it to say: "Intellect is the value of seeing
symbol-manipulation as different from the rest of experience" I.e: the
subject/object divide.
> The question when the intellectual level started should be answered
> using one's definition of the intellectual level. Your suggestion that
> the intellectual level started with some Greek philosopher (and
> contemporaries in Oriental cultures) .............snip
As I don't agree with the "symbol-manipulation" definition I welcomed
the reference to Greek philosophers. According to ZMM this is the
emergence of the SOM and matches my S/O-intellect perfectly. As
follows from my "solution" the society-intellect transition took place
earlier, but the S/O divide was its inevitable outcome.
> You wrote to Paul:
> 'If one extends the term intellectual to include primitive cultures
> just because they are thinking about things, why stop there?' But you
> didn't define the 'intellectual level' with 'thinking about thinking',
Which shows that Pirsig has been thinking.
> but with collecting and manipulating symbols. We shouldn't include a
> whole culture (i.e. social and intellectual patterns of value) in the
> intellectual level anyway.
...and that the reduction to "symbol-manipulation" isn't enough.
> 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.....snip
Intellectual value is no built-in part of a culture. Maybe necessary in
your view though because you see social behavior as mindless.
> Why don't you stick with what you wrote in chapter 30 of 'Lila'?
> 'He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos relationship
> went, maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. ..snip
Just because Pirsig says that the rituals may be the social-intellect
connection it does not mean that intellectual reality is synonymous
with rituals.
> snip ...............................That might put it back 50.000 -
> 100.000 years, but there WOULD be a good a reason to stop there. On
> the basis of your definition of the intellectual level I don't see a
> good reason to stop at the ancient Greek, however.
The intellectual level before Homo Sapiens? Well, we have always
disagreed here. Homerian time is the period when many historians
and/or philosophers postulate some great shift took place, in the MOQ
it spells the advent of the intellectual level.
> 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.'
I agree that the "symbol-manipulation" definition leads nowhere IMO
because it sounds too much like SOM's mind: The eye that can't see
itself.
> In a sense you DO have to
> start with a definition of the intellectual level to understand what
> it is.
Agree.
> 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.
...maybe agreement here too ...when I understand it :-)
> 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.
At times I wish we would heed the point about a child understanding
the Quality Idea and forget about these out-of-this-world definitions of
intellect.
Sincerely
Bo
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