In a message dated 98-10-27 13:14:36 EST, glove wrote:
<<<donny said
Even a (socially)
primative homo-sapian can come up w/ -ambush- or -trap- or -weapon-. I
don't think there's anything particuarly *intellectual* about that.
I shy away from saying that a monkey using a rock to smash open a
coconut is an example of Int. values. It's not. That's a
highly-developed, sophisticated expression of bilogical value: Desire for
food.>>>>
<< i tend to disagree with your assumption here and i believe Pirsig
does as well in Lila, page 344..."Within this evolutionary relationship it
is possible to see that intellect has functions that predate science and
philosophy. The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover
an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical purpose has been to help society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it
invents for this purpose."
after reading this passage, the monkey opening a coconut with a stone is
clearly an example of the intellect at work. certainly it is a biologically
driven need that the monkey feels, but how did the monkey learn to use the
rock to smash open the coconut? i would guess by seeing other monkeys do it,
perhaps its mother. so the monkey is using a social event to learn an
intellectual exercise to facilitate the satisfying of a biologically driven
desire for food. >>
I would say that the coconut problem is an early social function from which
intellect is derived. I would say it is not an intellectual pattern in that
the monkey doesnot think of stone, a tool that breaks things. It is the
beginning of the symbol of tool to use, but it is a direct stone-coconut
connection. A monkey doesn't have the immediate ability to think, what else
could I use this tool for. It is a socially derived value pattern much like
the monkey would use in finding which food is good to eat; the monkey learns
it socially. Language is first a social tool, not an intellectual one, and
most people use it this way 95% of their life. Think about what people really
talk about most of the time and you will see it.
Furthermore, your quote is taken out of context. Pirsig is saying that the
earlier society couldn't differentiate society and intellect because there was
no need for it, intellect didn't exist (no value to the people). The most
important things to them is what they considered arete/excellence - what was
the best for finding food, protecting group, etc.. The battle of
social/intellect (or subject/object) was argued in Greece many thousands of
years later (complex civilization existed at least 10,000 years earlier).
What Pirsig says is that neither side in that argument was right, but we
didn't find out about it until 2000 years later.
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:36 BST