From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 17:33:16 BST
Hi Sam
[Sam:]
In your review of my 'eudaimonic' paper, you write:
"The MOQ definition of the intellectual level is very broad and clear,
it is simply thinking"
and
"If you assume that any kind of thinking is an intellectual pattern of
value, including the thinking
that produced the myths and religion from which our cultures are
derived, there is nothing
counter-intuitive about the intellectual level."
and
"This is why it is better to keep all thinking at the intellectual
level. This can then include
everything from the first stable concept to the entire works of
Shakespeare through to quantum
physics. If you limit the intellectual level to logic and scientific
thinking and make all other
thinking 'social' that would be similar to creating different MOQ levels
for plants and animals. The
levels are discrete, not extensions of each other, this is a key element
of the MOQ."
and
"The ability to think establishes the difference between the
intellectual and social levels. By the
time one can ask whether society is right or not, the intellectual level
has developed for many
thousands of years."
and
"Intellect is any kind of thinking."
and
"I would argue that intellectual is defined simply as thinking."
However, in the recent letter from RMP that you obtained, he writes:
"I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when one extends
it much before the Ancient
Greeks.* If one extends the term intellectual to include primitive
cultures just because they are
thinking about things, why stop there? How about chimpanzees? Don't they
think? How about
earthworms? Don't they make conscious decisions? How about bacteria
responding to light and
darkness? How about chemicals responding to light and darkness? Our
intellectual level is broadening
to a point where it is losing all its meaning. You have to cut it off
somewhere, and it seems to me
the greatest meaning can be given to the intellectual level if it is
confined to the skilled
manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular
experience and which behave
according to rules of their own."
As I read it, RMP's understanding of the intellect is a) exactly what I
was criticising in my paper,
and b) not what you were trying to defend. Although I could be wrong
there.
My questions for you are: do you now agree with Pirsig's restriction of
'intellectual' to something
more specific than 'thinking'?
[Paul:]
Well, I never suggested thinking was something that chimpanzees or
bacteria did!
It seems my biggest mistake [among many I have made and will keep on
making!] was to assume that "thinking" has always been as it is now, a
conscious, deliberate activity, and has always been a key component in
human volition. For example, I couldn't imagine building pyramids if you
could not think. Through the reading I have done since July [when I sent
you that review] I have heard of different explanations for how
"thinking" may have evolved from something that controlled an
"unconscious" individual through admonition. As such, I still agree that
thinking is the conscious manipulation of symbols as I asserted in the
review, but I accept that I was very wrong about how long it has been
around in the way it is experienced now.
I still believe "thinking" in a social level sense would be habitual
activity albeit with a mental component [e.g. driving] rather than a
conscious activity. So my statement of "any kind of thinking" definitely
needs to be qualified and thus should probably be removed from the
review.
[Sam:]
And if so, how would you distinguish it from the 'logical/scientific
reasoning etc' which is the common understanding of 'intellect' (ie,
excluding emotion)?
[Paul:]
I think I said in the review that the intellectual level excluded
emotion [which I called a biological pattern]? I still don't believe
that thinking is limited to "logical/scientific reasoning" but I can see
that the early myths and early biblical writing came from a different
source than an individual human intellect. On this topic I will be
trying to tie in some of Julian Jaynes' ideas with the MOQ, the two are
amazingly alike, as both Bo and Pirsig have alluded to.
[Sam:]
If you hold
with your original view, could you explain why? And if you do agree with
Pirsig's clarification,
would you like to revisit your comments on my paper?!?
[Paul:]
I would definitely like to revisit the comments. Some of them would have
changed anyway; it was July when I sent it to you after all! E.g.
language is something I've given a lot of thought to since you kept
pressing me on it! I think I need to go away and come up with something
more coherent on language in the MOQ and try and work it through with
you.
I hope the review was of interest/use to you anyway!
Cheers
Paul
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