From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Nov 03 2003 - 16:46:39 GMT
Hi Platt and Moqians.
1 Nov. you wrote:
> Here's where we part company. I believe intellectual patterns (ideals
> and such) have been around since the emergence of thinking animals--
> namely humans--some 35,000 year ago. (There's even evidence that
> Neanderthals were thinking creatures.)
Let me think loudly. We have Pirsig's letter where he draws the
intellectual line with the Ancient Greeks, but it sounds as only from
necessity lest it would stretch away into absurdity.
PIRSIG:
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.
But this is NOT right in my opinion. If "thinking" (as a definition) allows
for intellectual patterns to go back to the inorganic level it is clearly
wrong, so why doesn't he discard it?
A level must be identical with its patterns, anything else makes a
mess of the whole MOQ. There was no matter before the inorganic
level; no life before biology ...etc. Thus we can't speak about
intellectual patterns before the intellectual level. Either intellect is older
than the Neanderthals or it was social value that guided their
"thinking".
In the letter Pirsig re-introduces the "manipulation of symbols"-
definition from "Lila's Child", but I am as unhappy with it as with
thinking. Symbol-manipulation is a definition of language and thus the
mind-intellect again.
Conclusion (of my thinking):
The "mentality" of Neanderthals, chimps, earthworms, bacteria and
chemicals have 2 different explanations: Intellect's and Quality's.
Intellect's is a S/O-grid put over all existence; conscious chemicals,
minful organisms, social beings with thoughts. Quality's however is
that all these "skills" ARE the respective value levels ...at various
stages of complexity. F.ex. the Neanderthal tribe reflected the social
level at a primitive stage, while the Egyptian Empire reflected it at a
most advanced stage. And we are sort of obliged to the Quality way
of seeing things. The intellectual level is a static level with a limited
point of view, it can't be QUALITY'S grand vista.
> Intellectual level values grew
> to dominate social level values around the time of Woodrow Wilson. At
> that time the intellectual level was born, but intellectual values
> influenced society long before that, namely, in laws guaranteeing
> certain individual rights--the Magna Carta for example.
I agree with all this, but a definition of intellect must be found that
allows for the LEVEL to have begun at a point in history, one can't just
see it as something fading way into absurdity. Pirsig drew a line at
Ancient Greece, but made it sound like an arbitrary decision, I would
say that it definitely WAS the Greeks or their Homerian forebears
....everything points to it . Didn't you sort of agree with my
Jaynes/Pirsig comparison? Don't we have a solution there? Even Paul
seemed positive.
> Now we're engaged in a huge battle with Islamo-fascism to determine
> whether social or intellectual values will dominant our lives.
I still agree, and with the rest of your post.
> In any case, doing philosophy, looking at paintings, claiming truths,
> and picking up bar ladies is fun, although it's been awhile since I
> engaged in the latter activity. :-)
How true :-D
Bo
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