Roger Parker wrote on 1 Dec 1998
> DECEMBER'S TOPIC: BRAIN, MIND AND INTELLECT
> In chapter 12 of Lila, R. M. Pirsig writes:
> 'The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links between
> these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms are
> missing: biology and society. Mental patterns do not originate out of
> inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of
> biology, which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists
> know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as social
> patterns are dominated by biological patterns are dominated by inorganic
> patterns. There is no direct scientific connection between mind and matter.
> As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language."
> Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived.'
> Brains, minds and intellectual patterns... How are these related to each other
> and to society? What defines and distinguishes an intellectual pattern and
> gives it its lofty perch atop the static patterns of value?
Roger and Squad.
You found a very good passage in LILA from which to start this
month's discussion. Intellect and mind in a MOQ context is a very
tough, but highly central subject; at times it is as if we have made
no progress at all.
Let me think aloud: The MOQ takes leave of the subject-object
division as the opening metaphysical chess-move. Another name for SOM
is mind-matter metaphysics. Conclusion: Neither mind nor matter can
retain their old role in the quality context! If not this basic
premise is heeded and we continue to speak about mind as if equal to
Q-Intellect, everything is screwed up.
However, in the above quotation it is as if SOM's matter is equal to
the Inorganic level, and SOM's mind is equal to the Intellect. I
don't question this, but merely want to point out that the Inorganic
Patterns have as little to do with Aristoteles' substance as
Intellectual Patterns have with our "ghost in the machine".
I have come to realize that trying to "integrate" MOQ with current
thinking is useless. It must start with what sets it apart and if few
understands let it be so, else we will have eternal recurrences to
the "spiritual" with (mirror) planes and levels all over the place
(Hi Fintan) and academical attempts to "ordinarize" Pirsig's ideas
(Hi Donny).
All right then, what is the Q-Intellect? What is thinking and where
does it take place if not IN THE MIND?? In ZAMM I there is a passage
in which Pirsig describes (what I interpret as) the birth of
subject-object metaphysics - or what as easily can be taken as the
Intellectual level's taking control over the Social level. He writes:
>"But now, as a result of the growing impartiality of the Greeks to
> the world around them, there was an increasing power of abstraction
> which permitted them to regard the old Greek mythos not as revealed
> truth but as imaginative creations of art. This consciousness, which
> had never existed anywhere before in the world spelled a whole new
> level of transcendence for the Greek civilization..."
Growing impartiality...power of abstraction...new consciousness. That
is the Intellectual Level (I would have liked to add: ..the ability
to discriminate between what is objective and what is subjective).
Nowhere does Pirsig speak about "ability to think" or "waking to
consciousness/awareness" or anything like that.
The SOM way of dividing everything compels us to read the above
sentence (power of abstraction) as ability to think and to see
manipulation of linguistic symbols (thinking, speaking and writing)
as something that takes place at a lofty astral realm we call MIND,
but is it not possible to attain a far more simple concept of it?
We don't believe that a person goes into another dimension when
disappearing into an adjacent room, so we needn't move into a "mind"
dimension to think. But grrrr the SOM pursues me. I search for the
perfect metaphor here.
Intellect is thinking, but along certain (what did Glove call it?)
creodes. very different from social creodes, which in turn is
different from biological creodes.
The brain part I haven't touched....hope that Ken Clark has read some
article somewhere. His piece on pain from September was a gem.
Bodvar
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