From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Wed Nov 05 2003 - 17:00:41 GMT
Hi Platt, the last Moqian (the rest have gone Rortian)
4 Nov. 2003 you wrote in response to my:
> > 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?
> I agree this is NOT right. One of the few times I disagree with
> Pirsig. Obviously bugs don't think. Aware, yes. But thoughtful, no. No
> ability to symbolize, to abstract. (Remember the great 'Are atoms
> aware?' debate of years ago?)
It was not so much Pirsig showing how "thinking" ends in thoughtful
bugs that I found wrong - no, I loved that - but his not discarding it as
a definition of intellect (after that display). IMO it is useless because it
is too IMMENSE, it is one of those unassimilated concepts
(Aesthetics, intuition, truth ...) that can give rise to a metaphysics like
the MOQ ...and thus are some aspect of Value!
> > 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".
> I see your point. But I see an incipient contradiction in your
> statement " . . . it was social value that guided their "thinking."
> How do you define thinking as you used used it in that sentence? When
> did that form of "thinking" emerge?
My quip was merely to show the futility of using thinking as a criterion.
One may as well say "social VALUE guiding social VALUE".
> > 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.
> "Manipulation of symbols" works for me, and it's on that definition I
> base my statement that thinking goes back to Neanderthals who left
> evidence of symbol manipulation in art artifacts such as totems and
> bracelets.
I agree in the sense that I see manipulation of symbols=language and
it goes back to the Neanderthal era. This advanced social pattern
ruled for more than 50000 years, but then with the said Jaynes bi-
cameral breakdown (1300-600 BC) this symbol-manipulation which
had been auditorial turned internal and became "thoughts". This was
the birth of the intellectual level of the MOQ .....and of self-
consciousness according to Jaynes.
An aside here: I guess you will balk at this and say "But the
Neanderthals must have been thinking beside going round listening
to voices in their heads". Please look to Jaynes' deliberations on what
in his terms were an "unconscious" existence, in moqish social reality
at: http://julianjaynessociety.tripod.com/mind.pdf
This transformation gave rise to the impression of a mind realm where
thoughts (and their manipulation) "thinking" took place. The first result
was mere doubt in the old mythological reality (when "thoughts" had
been the gods speaking to them). But by and by the ones who
explored this new internal space (the first thinkers) became more bold
and the outcome was SOM: A free mind (subject) having access to
the objective world.
This theory satisfy all views: Intellect is MIND, it is THINKING, it is
CONSCIOUSNESS ....from its own point of view, but it is S/O from
MOQ's point of view. In addition it fulfills the tenet of DQ using a
pattern of the lower level to escape that level. (carbon to escape
"inorgany", language to escape society).
> I don't quite follow your argument here. Seems to me that the
> intellectual level, of all the levels, offers the broadest point of
> view. But I grant that all points of view are limited by human
> physiology. (A bee experiences light waves that we can't see in our
> everyday lives.) That the Quality grand vista sees everything in terms
> of some things are better than others, i.e., values, morality, means
> it sees the intellectual level as better than the social
Yes, this is the idea. Quality SEES intellect. From within one can't see
the outlines of anything, thus the Q-view is somehow off-set to
intellect. I noticed that Pirsig in the letter went lightly over this
argument
PIRSIG:
The argument that the MOQ is not an intellectual formulation
but some kind of other level is not clear to me. There is
nothing in the MOQ that I know of that leads to this
conclusion.
but who knows .. in a future letter :-)
> the social
> better than the biological, etc. but not forgetting the higher depend
> on the lower. This Quality "grand vista' is available not just to us,
> but to all creatures, great and small. I willing adopt the 'grand
> vista' stance, but that doesn't diminish my great respect for the
> value of intellect
No, it does NOT diminish the value of intellect, it remains top notch,
subordinate only to DQ alone.
> and the transcendent values of truth, beauty and
> goodness.
In my opinion these are veins of the mother lode QUALITY.
> I don't recall. (the Jaynes theory)
OK, now you are informed :-)
> In any event, what matters most to me is using
> Pirsig's levels to identify people who are driven by primarily by
> social level values or intellectual level values.
Yes, the MOQ is a great tool, I find it useful at more and more fields,
not least the one below .....
> Thus, we agree on
> the current war between the West and Islamo-Fascism.
Yours sincerely
Bo
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