From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Fri Jan 09 2004 - 23:24:23 GMT
Hi DM,
>Steve said: During this social era, which I take to mean the era
> before intellect
> reached a certain degree of freedom from social control, such an explanation
> of experience was still an example of intellect. Spirits seeking mother
> earth has been proven to be a bad intellectual pattern, but it is still an
> intellectual pattern, a pattern of thought.
> DM: I see what you're saying. I think Bo's point is that it is only once
> the SO divide is being used by thinking that is has the sort of power/use
> that we would now call intellectual. Any other suggestions for a sort
> of thinking that is intellectual but does not use SO divide?
Steve:
In the MOQ, intellectual is a type of pattern of value. Such usage must be
distinguished from that of labeling a person an intellectual. Everyone
thinks, by which I mean everyone participates in intellectual patterns, but
not everyone is considered an intellectual. I think when you say "only once
the SO divide is being used by thinking that is has the sort of power/use
that we would now call intellectual" I take you to be talking about the high
quality of the intellectual pattern of distinguishing subjective and
objective experience. It is a good intellectual pattern, not the only one.
The question also depends a lot on what you (and Bo) mean by the SO divide.
When Pirsig uses the term subject-object metaphysics, I don't take him to be
criticizing the structure of grammar with it's subjects and predicates, for
example. When one uses the pronoun "I" he has not necessarily committed an
SOM sin. I take Pirsig to be talking about a metaphysical assumption that
primary reality is composed of mental substances and material substances.
Perceived qualities such as color, odor, and temperature are secondary
qualities (less than real) since material substance is composed of particles
that have no such properties, and such qualities as emotions are tertiary
qualities even further removed from primary reality.
When Pirsig uses subject-object metaphysics he also is referring to a
distinction between subjective experience and objective experience. I don't
think intellect depends on making such metaphysical assumptions.
Intellect logically has to be in place before philosophy can evolve, since
one must think before he can think about thinking, so SOM philosophical
assumptions cannot be the equivalent of intellect.
> Also you say: mathematics for example does not require the supposition of
> material
>> substances interacting with mental substances.
>
> See the possibility of an argument that maths does exactly this via
> its use of the concept of space as a form of experience:
> http://www.geoffreyread.org/fate.html
That's a really long paper. Could you summarize the relevant argument?
Regards,
Steve
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