Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Tue, 7 Oct 1997 17:27:16 +0100
A good while back, Diana McPartlin wrote:
> Maybe the key to understanding the relationship between social and
> intellectual value lies in the role that language has played in human
> evolution.
>
> To go back to the days before humans had any intellectual or social
> value is to go back to Neanderthal man or even to the apes. At some
> point they must have realized (dynamically not intellectually) that if
> they formed a social group they would have a better chance of survival
> than if they just kicked each other's heads in. From then on
> communication must have been the most dynamic value. That would be what
> held the group together. From this need to communicate emerges language.
> Initially language would have been dynamic social value.
> But with the process of naming things comes the concept of subjects and
> objects and from that, cause and effect relationships. So in the
> invention of language is the birth of intellectual value. Of course it
> was a long time from when the first words were spoken until SOM became
> the way we interpret the world, but I think that's where it started.
> Understanding cause and effect is the purpose of intellectual value. My
> definition of Intellectual value would be "the pursuit of rationality".
>
> The intellectual rational patterns in the brain exist on top of the
> social language ones. Rational thought could not survive without a
> language.
>
> As for intellectual patterns residing on the organic patterns of the
> brain. In a sense they do. If you look at the brains of apes, the motor
> functions of their brains are similar to ours but they don't have such
> well developed frontal lobes. So I guess Magnus is right that the
> intellectual patterns have a physical home in the organic body.
>
> The problem is that humans continued to evolve biologically while the
> social and intellectual values were developing. But, the intellectual
> patterns would not have evolved if the social patterns had not evolved
> first. So that's why intellectual patterns do have a physical reality
> but didn't come from organic value.
>
I have pulled out an old book that attempts to document this process--the
process of the development of the intellectual level and the static
biological latch that made it possible. It is The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, ISBN 0-395-20729-0,
published in 1976.
OOBBM is really interesting from a MoQ point of view. I'm beginning a quick
re-read. Perhaps in some ways it would be better to read the whole thing
before posting, but I've found some things the group might be interested in,
and it seems better to deal with small chunks anyway.
After reading the first two chapters, The Problem and Consciousness of
Consciousness, (and remembering from my last read) here are some
observations:
* Jaynes was aware of Pirsig's levels. He didn't have MoQ to use for
vocabulary, but too many of his examples could be examples of the
things that are discussed here in this group.
* He lists and discusses many of the types of interactions between mind,
body, social patterns and intellectual patterns. We could label them
according to MoQ, beause they are already sorted that way.
* Jaynes details a historical and biological process that could be the
explanation of the functioning of the social world before the
intellectual level existed, including historical examples of the
interaction of Dynamic Quality on that social level.
* The main point of his book is to detail a human biological development
(a biological latch that made the intellectual level
possible)--volition that could function not only within the social
level, but, more and more, function with awareness, in the intellectual
level. This is, I believe, what he means by consciousness--the ability
to deliberately and knowingly function within the intellectual level.
If you're interested, I could post some examples. Or maybe you already
have the book.
Just as a teaser to the group, as part of Jaynes' discussion of the
unconscious (I would say non-intellectual) functioning, he says:
In the common motor skills studied in the laboratory as well, such as
complex pursuit-rotor systems or mirror-tracing, the subjects who are
asked to be very conscious of their movements do worse...The Zen
exercise of learning archery is extremely explicit on this, advising
the archer not to think of himself as drawing the bow and releasing the
arrow, but releasing himelf from the consciousness of what he is doing
by letting the bow stretch itself and the arrow release itself from the
fingers at the proper time.
(The Consciousness of
Consciousness p. 34)
This looks like a pretty concise invocation of Zen in the Art of Archery to
me.
Maggie
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