Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Sat, 18 Jul 1998 05:09:46 +0100
On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Horse wrote:
>
> Inorganic memory = Substance (Energy/Matter)
> Biological memory = Genes (Instinct)
> Social Memory = Tradition (Cultural Beliefs, Laws etc.)
> Intellectual memory = Ideas (Thought, Science etc. )
>
This is something I've been warning against for a while now, and
thank you, Horse, for giving me a chance to make it explicit.
I strongly do not agree that "Thought" is an example of an
intellectual pattern of value. There is a tendency to want to make
IntPoVs into something basically translating as Mind, consciousness,
ego... That is not my own belief and that is not how I interpret Pirsig
in LILA. Thought (or consciousness) exisits (at least, and in some way)
as biological patterns, social patterns (this is the kind of thought we
are most familer w/ --actually I'm sure we do a lot of "biological
thinking" but just pay a lot less atention to that) and lastly -- most
recently -- as intellectual patterns.
As I read LILA, "IntPoVs" refers to a spicific *type of* thought
-- one based on riger, objectivity (yes, objectivity), "logic"... but
most basically on the idea that a proof is independent of the person
who presents it. That's the big idea behind the Enlightenment. Before
then, your ability to prove was highly limited by your social statuss.
The
lock-you-up-in-a-box proof (the Enlightenment/scientific ideal) is good
regardless of who presents it. It has a life all it's own!!! (An
originaly Hegelian idea.) Of course, a prover is still, today, limited
by
his social status. As late as (I believe) 1950-something Native
Amaricans
were not allowed to testify in Tennesse state coarts. They were
considered
a basically decietfull, untrustworthy people, and there words were not
admisable as evidence. But we're talking, here, about ideals, anyway --
one of the driving ideals behins the Modern World, really --
objectivity!
(As I've said before, no one is ever 100% objective, but so what? The
point is that in certain social situations one is socially(morally)
called
upon to be as objective as possible.)
Pirsig himself says that IntPoVs have only fully developed in
the
*last hundred years*. Obviously he's not talking about just "thought"
(or
mind, or ego, or Subject-Object Consciousness). And, again, this is my
old quam w/ Bodvar's interpritation, although I have not yet managed to
present it in such a way as that anyone seems to "get it." Sorry.
And again,
Remember, the 4 SPoV "levels" develop TEMPORALY in a certain
order. Each is dependent (ONLY) on the levels below it (not above), but
each is, also, a *form of life* (getting Hegelian again) in it's own
right. This is why a wolf pack or a bird flock is not a SocialPoV (or
not
one in any but a very limited and basically metiphorical sense). The
United States of America (and "the American way") is a living thing (a
big
"Giant"), and it survives even as generations of constituent members
come
and pass. Bird flocks don't have anything like "the American way," or
Christiandom, or The Queen of England (essentialy a living, profesional
symbol of that way of life, that Giant). England is its own life-form;
analogus (on the Intellectual level) to the Theory of Relativity,
Marxism,
or the MoQ -- also, all, living things.
That established, one can easily see that thinking,
consciousness,
etc. must have come in BEFORE (or w/) the Social level, not after. Am I
making sense here?
Look, the MoQ has no translation for the Cartisan Mind! The
thing
doesn't exist. Forget about it. Think Inter-personal; not
inner-personal!
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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