LS Re: FAQ - Metaphysics and all that


Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Tue, 18 Nov 1997 16:55:23 +0100


Hi, Hugo, Diana, Doug, LS!

Hugo Fjelsted Alroe wrote:

> Diana:
> >What is intellectual quality?
> >
> >Intellectual quality is any phenomenon that propagates subject-object
> >thinking - democracy, freedom of speech, mathematics, philosophy and so
> >on.
>
> Diana, is Intellectual quality only about subject-object thinking? I would
> say that the kind of thinking Pirsig is promoting is very much part of
> Intellectual quality.
>
>

I'm going to throw something kind of new at you, a different slant on
"intellectual".

(I probably ought to admit, and this is as good a place as any, that the whole
huge LS discussion of SOM evades me. I can't figure out what the point is. )

I read the other day (somewhere on the net, and I can't find it again, can't
believe I didn't bookmark it), that linguists (at least a group of them) say
that by adolescence, a person has thousands of complete dialects of his native
language stored in his head, each one appropriate for particular situations.

Think of these dialects-- language--being social patterns. They exist within
the person, and are shared by this person and the society.

It is these social patterns that determine how we speak, (and I suspect
probably also most of what we say). We simply follow the pattern until there
is a conflict of value with that particular pattern, in which case there are
intellectual patterns available to us to re-evaluate and choose a different
social pattern (from the thousands available to us), at which the operative
level shifts back to social.
-------------------------
For a more basic version, consider pre-history, the 100+ thousand years before
the last 3000. Biological quality had been domination, challenge, victory in
the struggle for resources. Social patterns came into being that freed people
(and animals) from this constant struggle. These patterns recognized "my
group" and "other". In the case of a meeting with "other", biological
struggle was activated. In the case of "my group", a pecking order, a
heirarchy, existed which pre-determined the outcome of the struggle, so it
didn't need to happen. An agreement determined which entity was dominant or
submissive.

None of this is "conscious". No intellectual patterns exist at this point.
But the patterns are not innate, either. The child must be raised by the
society if it is going to be able to participate.

Shared behaviors (including the new cooperative patterns) that benefit the
group are passed on by imitation and there is no change, no choice, except
changes forced by changing natural circumstances, in other words, accidental
happenings that are imitated.

At some point, the act of reacting to a change, the situation arises of having
two competing patterns of behavior available. A "choice" is made. When the
fact of having to make a choice becomes recognized as a social pattern, the
intellectual level has begun.

The social level is still the dominant level of human action.
----

The multiplication tables are a social pattern. The response that leaps to
our lips when someone asks, "What's 7 X 8?" has no intellect involved.

To extend this, it looks to me as if almost all the math taught in school is
comprised of social patterns, with occasional social recognition of the value
of evaluation (bringing in the intellectual).

Pirsig's card file comes to mind. Lots of discrete chunks of information
(intellectual patterns stored in social form), with the only real question
being asked to be to compare two of them and say "Which of these comes first?"

The subject/object concept is a social pattern. It is learned. It allows
certain stimuli to lead to certain patterned responses, part of which includes
the pre-determined points at which the intellectual patterns of evaluation are
allowed to kick in.

I think a lot of what we are trying to label "intellectual" is "social".

I'd better stop. Again, this didn't turn out to be simple.

Push back if you're still reading. Thanks.

Maggie

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