LS Re: Intelligence vs Intellect.


Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 18:59:39 +0100


Gene wrote (Oct 18):
 
> Bodvar wrote:
> > What haunts us is the Mind of SOM; It keeps surfacing repeatedly
> > because it has not been understood that it is eradicated from the
> > MOQ, NOT REPLACED BY DYNAMIC QUALITY.

> I doubt that mind is eradicated by MoQ. Mind of SOM is being born by
> QEvents again and again. Subject (with its mind) and object are created a
> moment after an intellectual pattern bumps into any other pattern.

Gene, I may tax your and everybody else's patience with my
insistence on the difference between Subject/Object's "mind"
( nsciousness areness) versus Quality's "Intellect", but let me
have another go at it. You say (above): "Mind of SOM is being born by
quality events.....etc.".

Okay, This refers to Pirsig's first book ZMM, I'm not saying that it
is wrong, but bear in mind that Pirsig developed the MOQ during the
seventeen years between the two books. In my opinion, while writing
ZMM, he himself was very much steeped in SOM thinking (how could he
think otherwise, the MOQ wasn't worked out?). ZMM is the story about
the crash of a mind so rational that it refused to accept the usual
warnings about this-you-should-not-bother-yourself-about, and the
birth of a new understanding, but still not sure what the replacement
would be like. We should mostly use LILA as a reference when
discussing the MOQ.

We all agree that subjects and objects become subordinate to quality
in the MOQ. Pirsig (in the SODAV paper) divided the four static
quality levels into two 'subjective' ones (Society and Intellect) and
two 'objective' ones (Matter and Life), but this is not substantial
to the MOQ, I believe it more was Pirsig's attempt to "ingratiate"
himself to the SOM-steepen audience. No, the way subjects and
objects become subsets is that objects become Inorganic- and subjects
become Intellectual value. This causes a metamorphosis to Matter,
but so it does to Mind! . The Static Intellectual level is no longer
consciousness of objective reality, but CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE VALUE OF
FREEING ONESELF FROM SOCIETY'S BOND.

The big divide in the MOQ is between dynamic and static, and even if
Intellect is the best and freest, it is STATIC all the same. The
(Berg/Renselle!) theory of constant interaction with Dynamic Quality
in the quantum states of the brain is an introducti of the SOM-mind
again, and foreign to the MOQ.

The claim that matter is value is easily adopted and welcomed by
people who feels that there is something "rotten" in the kingdom of
Substance Metaphysics (as Pirsig sometimes calls it), but the Mind is
seemingly a different - uh - matter. This shows that the tentacles of
the SOM reaches far deeper than we think, and not easily severed.
Mind is connected with everything good and human and if that is to be
parted with, it sounds evil and dehumanificating (is that a word?),
but this not so; not the least. The MOQ is a doctrine where the
"building block" is value and where everything has a place within the
moral order.

The SOM mind also carries the "consciousness" connotation; The
age-old idea of us human beings halfway between nature and God, aware
of objective reality, while the rest of the creatures live in foggy
slumber (the biblical myth of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge etc.). Many want the Intellectual level to be
equal with this kind of consciousness, and - mind you! - that can be
defended if the subject/object absolute implications are kept at bay
(After all Intellect IS a new level of reality!) .

I should also have liked to treat the obvious question: "Where does
the mental activity take place if not in the mind?", but this is more
than enough for now.

Finally. I just received a preliminary draft for a doctoral thesis
by a Swedish student (Robert Pallbo from Malmö) who has created what
he calls "a new model of the mind" built on the Autopoesis idea and
Pirsig (according to him). We have corresponded of and on for a
couple of years, but a disagreement developed over much the same
issue as with Magnus (Pallbo's claim was that mind was brain's
workings and not "social") Still, his latest paper amazed me greatly.
In it he inverts the usual concept where mind is considered ordered -
or bringing order - and the world chaotic. His new idea is the other
way round: Mind is dynamic while the world is ordered! I will have to
think how this fits into the MOQ scheme. He still upholds the
mind/world dualism admittedly, ut hardly in the ordinary sense, and
it struck me intuitively: Isn't this Pirsig's claim too? Reality (the
world) is ordered in four discrete levels, while "mind" is everything
and nothing; another way of calling it chaotic or dynamic.
Whatever its merits, it shows what tremendous pressure is building to
escape from SOM's chains.

Gene, or anyone else, does this make sense?

Thanks for reading anyway.

Bodvar

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