From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jul 30 2004 - 11:49:24 BST
Hi Johnny
Paul previously said:
>Pirsig defines the intellectual level as the skilled manipulation of
>abstract symbols that stand for patterns of experience.
Johnny said:
I can see how doing that marked an important evolutionary step, and is
dependent on society, but I don't see how it is necesarrily seperate
from society and not a social pattern also.
Paul:
Well, all intellectual patterns are, in one sense, also social. In his
letter on the intellectual level, Pirsig writes:
"Just as every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all
inorganic patterns are biological; and just as every social level is
also biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so
every intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns
are intellectual." [Pirsig, Sept 2003]
In my answer to you, I suggested that the aspect of intellectual
patterns that is "also social" is language, and in particular, the
socially learned conventions which make language possible. So one can
broadly say that all intellectual patterns are contained in socially
learned language (or language-derived derived system of arranging
symbols), but not all socially learned language is intellectual.
Johnny said:
It would suggest that a written meatloaf recipe is intellectual, but the
same recipe learned from watching each other is not.
Paul:
Firstly, I think writing itself is a socially learned skill. Secondly, I
think written words may contain intellectual patterns but may not. If
somebody writes some general principles that provide an explanation of
the chemical reactions occurring in the cooking of meatloaf then that
will contain an intellectual component, if it is a simple set of
particular directions then it may not.
Johnny said:
I agree that Intellectual patterns are noted and propogated usually by
skillfuly manipulating symbols, but the patterns themselves aren't their
material means of propogation.
Paul:
The intellectual patterns themselves are a complex web of preferences
that have directed a particular manipulation of symbols. These
preferences may be summarised as logical coherence, brevity, magnitude
of explanation and precision of prediction.
Johnny said:
And couldn't an intellectual pattern never be expressed with symbols,
like say the pattern of overthrowing a leader when he becomes too
tyrannical or blasphemous?
Paul:
Well, I think the "overthrowing" itself would be achieved biologically
and socially. If the *consequences* of the overthrow have been
considered rationally, then that would be the symbolic intellectual
component. If the overthrow is predicted to increase the dominance of
intellect over society, then that would be intellectual motivation also.
Paul previously said:
>The dependence
>on society may be seen if you consider that a symbol, in its strictest
>sense, stands for something else by *convention* and not by
>*resemblance*. A symbol by resemblance is more correctly termed an
>analog. Analogs include things such as pictures and sounds that
>represent something to the degree that they resemble sensory
experience.
>As such, the cave paintings at Lascaux, for example, are not evidence
of
>intellect.
Johnny said:
I don't see how that distinction moves the use of symbols into a
different level. It is still social conventions, whether it's a picture
or a word.
Paul:
It is *more of* a social convention than pictures, and that is
significant. Intellect is built on these conventions, not directly in
the biological brain.
Moreover, by creating symbolic language (independent of a particular,
biological i.e. sensory, resemblance) these conventions allow *general*
and *abstract* intellectual patterns to be built out of them. Also,
these intellectual patterns are not themselves social conventions, they
embody a whole different quality of their own.
As a parallel, DNA is made up of inorganic patterns, but is not an
inorganic pattern itself, it follows biological rules. Carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen atoms allow DNA to be built out of them but remain inorganic
patterns nonetheless.
Paul previously said:
>Therefore, mind is symbol manipulation and is dependent on the socially
>learned set of symbols and rules that have meaning by convention - a
>certain stage of language.
Johnny said:
But how is it that "mind" is not social, then? I see the distinction
between pictures and symbols, but not how this makes a new level. The
patterns are what define the level, not their mode of propogation.
Paul:
Mind is social only to the degree that society is biological humans and
human bodies are atoms. Without the mechanisms of learning and
communication that society provides there are no symbols to manipulate.
Johnny said:
But the intellectual patterns in Lila are not the book itself, right?
Paul:
Not entirely, but along with the language it is written in, the visual
images processed by the brain and the paper it is printed on, it is "the
book itself."
Johnny said:
Yet, the book itself is those ink marks in the shapes of a written
language. The thing that makes this book intellectual is that it is
about society, it treats society as though it was an individual object
interacting with other social patterns..
Paul:
It is also about biological patterns, inorganic patterns, other
intellectual patterns and Dynamic Quality, so I don't see how being
"about society" provides a definition of intellect. I think you are
trying to follow a line of thought which doesn't quite work i.e. biology
is interacting atoms, society is interacting organisms, therefore
intellect is interacting societies. If you take the components of
language as the social patterns that enable intellect by interacting, it
may work, but I'm not sure.
Cheers
Paul
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