From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Nov 17 2003 - 11:40:34 GMT
Hi Bo
Paul prev:
> "Cavemen are usually depicted as hairy, stupid creatures who don't do
> much, but anthropological studies of contemporary primitive tribes
> suggest that stone age people were probably bound by ritual all day
> long. There's a ritual for washing, for putting up a house, for
> hunting, for eating and so on - so much so that the division between
> 'ritual' and 'knowledge' becomes indistinct. In cultures without books
> ritual seems to be a public library for teaching the young and
> preserving common values and information." [LILA, p.442/443]
> And in Lila's Child he suggests that:
> "...books such as the Bible and Koran and Gita have been held to be
> far more important than any individual life. They have preserved the
> intellectual patterns that have saved whole cultures from degeneration
> into savagery. Similarly, it was the rediscovery of lost Greek
> patterns of intellect that is usually credited for the Renaissance."
> [Lila's Child p.313]
> Once intellectual patterns latch in their own right beyond the
> biological lifespan and experience of an individual and beyond the
> purposes of associated rituals and customs of societies they can grow,
> evolve and die with a higher degree of versatility and freedom and
> according to intellectual rules.
Bo:
About intellect as something "beyond the biological lifespan". Hmm,
society is what goes beyond biology and the old cultures were
obsessed with what survives the individual, particularly the Egyptians.
Paul:
I agree. The point I am making is that written language enables one's
thoughts to be stored beyond your thinking of them and hence beyond your
biological lifespan. It is in this sense that I think Pirsig talks about
ghosts in ZMM.
Paul prev:
> "Intellectuality occurs when these customs as well as biological and
> inorganic patterns are designated with a sign that stands for them and
> these signs are manipulated independently of the patterns they stand
> for. "Intellect" can then be defined very loosely as the level of
> independently manipulable signs. Grammar, logic and mathematics can be
> described as the rules of this sign manipulation." [Letter from Pirsig
> to Paul]
Bo:
I am not all happy with the "sign (symbol) manipulation" definition, it
is
language and it began far back in social reality and certainly contained
both grammar, syntax (rules of logic).
Paul:
I think it is plausible that whilst grammar evolved with the social use
of language it was not laid down in principle and as an underlying
system until the intellectual level. I think Pirsig's point is that
these "rules" become separate from the "rules" of society and can
provide the structure and basis for manipulation of signs independently
of the social purposes and customs from which they evolved and were in
service of. However, those purposes, e.g. communication, are still there
and so in many ways patterns of intellect are "suspended in language."
At the high end of the intellectual scale we have art which need not
limit itself to these intellectual rules and is more able to follow the
Dynamic process more closely but perhaps is also less likely to find a
static latch?
Bo:
I believe things to have happened the way Jaynes suggests - auditory
language turned into "thoughts", but all with strong MOQ overtones of
this being DQ "hijacking" language to reach a higher level. This
created (the impression of) a mind-space and of a self
(consciousness) who looked "down" on creation.
Paul:
I also think Jaynes' speculation has merit. It is interesting to reread
Iliad with his theory in mind.
Paul
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Nov 17 2003 - 11:41:20 GMT