From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 10:42:29 BST
Hi Paul,
In your review of my 'eudaimonic' paper, you write:
"The MOQ definition of the intellectual level is very broad and clear, it is simply thinking"
and
"If you assume that any kind of thinking is an intellectual pattern of value, including the thinking
that produced the myths and religion from which our cultures are derived, there is nothing
counter-intuitive about the intellectual level."
and
"This is why it is better to keep all thinking at the intellectual level. This can then include
everything from the first stable concept to the entire works of Shakespeare through to quantum
physics. If you limit the intellectual level to logic and scientific thinking and make all other
thinking 'social' that would be similar to creating different MOQ levels for plants and animals. The
levels are discrete, not extensions of each other, this is a key element of the MOQ."
and
"The ability to think establishes the difference between the intellectual and social levels. By the
time one can ask whether society is right or not, the intellectual level has developed for many
thousands of years."
and
"Intellect is any kind of thinking."
and
"I would argue that intellectual is defined simply as thinking."
However, in the recent letter from RMP that you obtained, he writes:
"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."
As I read it, RMP's understanding of the intellect is a) exactly what I was criticising in my paper,
and b) not what you were trying to defend. Although I could be wrong there.
My questions for you are: do you now agree with Pirsig's restriction of 'intellectual' to something
more specific than 'thinking'? And if so, how would you distinguish it from the 'logical/scientific
reasoning etc' which is the common understanding of 'intellect' (ie, excluding emotion)? If you hold
with your original view, could you explain why? And if you do agree with Pirsig's clarification,
would you like to revisit your comments on my paper?!?
Cheers
Sam
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