DONNY AGREES W/ BODVAR AND ADDS EMPHASIS ON THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF
INTELLECTUAL VALUES.
Then I also go on to discus the nature of philosophy itself and
contrst my approch w/ Bodvar's.
***********************************
Hello, Bodvar and LS.
Bo, I tend to agree w/ your way of viewing the IntPoVs. I think
you hit the nail on the head w/
___________________
[Pirsig] 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.
_____________________
What I would like to add to this is that Intellectual value
rhythms manafest out of social moral rhythms and so always have a social
ellement to them (ie. Living species are made up of "matter"; societies
are made from an organic species; and intellctual "truth" is made from
society.)
I stress that:
(1) ONLY a society that has ideals (SocPoVs) suitable to
intellectual morals will have IntPoVs. The *society* (as a collective)
must hold that there is a better way to settle argumants than social
statuss... that anyone can deduce and realize the -- objective -- truth
regardless of what they're station may be.
Here in the South we have a term (and parden my use of it) that
still creeps around in our discourse: "trick niger." Until (basically)
recently there was a great prejaduce that black people were basically
dumber than white people. They were somewhere in-between animals and
"real" human-beings. So, whenever it did turn-up that there was a black
man who was of some exceptional intellegence (maybe he'd read Emmerson or
could do multiplication in his head... or was a classically trained
musician) it was assumed -- just naturally taken for granted -- by
(typical, white) Southerners that this was not a black man of exceptional
intelligence or eduacation... but a "trick niger." There was some kind of
trick involved; like Roy Roger's horse, Trigger, who could (apparently) do
arithmatic by stomping his foot.
Only since about WWI has it come to be held, popualerly, that
there is an -objective- ellement to the truth -- that truth stands
independent of race, creed, or income... such that, now, blacks, women,
Native Americans, and everybody can be potential, suitable judges of
truth. This is a SOCIAL value that must be in place in order for
Intellectual rhythms to flower. John Leonard once said that the first 200
years of American history can be seen as the gradual expansion of the "we"
in "We the people..." (This is why when someone [Fintan] suggests that
Social morality should re-dominate intellectual freedom/objectivity, I git
a bit miffed because I see this as an attack on the ideals my nation was
founded on.)
Pirsig emphasizes the Greeks, but I think he's giving them too
much credit. I think the Intelectual level is -- primarily -- the child
of the Enlightenment philosophs (Voltare and Rousseau) and the
philosopher/poloticians who put their ideas into effect (Jefferson,
Franklin and Adams). Intellectual morality grew out of Western Europe and
the collonies... and I'll let my countrey take a lot of the credit for
leading the way, if you don't mind. (But, as I've said before, this
Ethno-centric/Euro-centric view of history does bug me -- and the more I
read Spengler's revisionist history *The Decline of the West* the more and
more suspicious I become.)
(2) I emphasize that IntPoVs are a *means of communication*.
Dwight Van de Vate (a philosopher just retired from my university -- and
I mean a real philosopher and not a philosologist) once said, "You'll get
a lot farther if you stop thinking about science as a window into the mind
of God, and think of it as, primarily, a way in which we talk to one
another."
The intellectual morals are the rules of (scientifc/achademic/
judicial/etc.) discourse. The intellectual values are the values of PROOF.
A proof is a way you settle an argument -- spicifically: It is whatever
your society holds is the best, most socialaly accepted, most MORAL way to
settle the argument. If we have a disagreement, I can employ a number of
ways to convince you I am right. I can bribe you. Blackmail you. I could
charm you w/ my wit and charisma. I could send Knuckles and Rocko over to
your house to beat the crap out of you. But we (as a society) hold that
there is a best way to settle this. That is: for me to offer you a
rational, intelligable, sound proof. So, think of a court of law. The
jurry's job (moral imperative) is to be objective, intellectual beings. To
not be swayed by charisma, money, intemidation... but to way "the facts"
and come to a logical conclusion. And again I'll stress: This is the
Enlightenment ideal -- not the Greek. (Socrates is rarly ever rational.
He's a sophist -- the best of them -- and he uses every little rhetorical
trick in the book. Any *Saterday Night Live* fans out there? Socrates
comes across like Phil Harman's "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.")
So, point #2 is: Intellectual value rhythms only arise among
multiple persons (person = a social entity). Robinson Caruso on his
island, building a hut and fire and snares to catch food... this is NOT an
example of IntPoVs! Not only does IntPoVs not = mind, but it does not =
reason/logic either. It must include this social ellement in it. My cat
can emply reason/logic to a certain extent -- she can "figure something
out."
Now, before the spears start flying, I know that this is NOT
exactly RMP's view. I've seen passages in LILA that clearly sugest IntPoVs
are a kin to ego or mind or logic or your own picture of the world
(contradicting my point #2) and toward the end of LILA he talks about
non-Western IntPoVs, spicifically Native American IntPoVs (contradicting
my point #1), and even says that "going mad" is nothing more than leaving
Western IntPoVs for non-Western views (a "crazy person" is one w/
unreasonable view who can't be persuaded to change those views no matter
what kind of air-tite logic you argue w/). On the other hand, in a
letter to Anthony, RMP *defined* the IntPoVs as the values of reason,
clarity, comunicability and logical soundness (this would mean a crazy
person has -no- IntPoVs) -- so, personaly, I don't think Pirsig is clear
in his own head about this topic.
This is my view. It's BASED on RMP, but also influenced a lot by
Van de Vate and Hegel and Erving Goffman. To me it seems a clearer
picture... more useful, (perhaps) higher quality.
____________________
On a final note:
Bo acused me or "ordinarizing" Pirsig. I take that to mean, "to
render ordinary/typical?" I think those words have an un-duely negative
connotation. Let's look at it this way.
In 2nd philosophy (like science) we are arguing and trying to
prove something. But in metaphydsics (1st phil.) we are not. Here we are
not constructing/deconstructing the correct picture of the world (CPOW) (that's
2nd phil.); we are asking "What IS a CPOW? How does it exist? What is it's
function and how does it do that?" We are not serching for The Truth...
we are asking: what could possibly count -as- truth and why -- and how?
Here we stand in a gallery of paintings. I'm not trying to find
"the real" painting. I'm intrested just in the nature of painting... the
act of painting, the aesthetics, what makes a good painting and why is
that... I'm here as an art historian and aesthetician, not as a
scientist. So what's my method? Well, obviously, one good method is
comparison. I can make comparisons -among- the paintings (rather than
saying, "this is the real one; the others are all fake/false/wrong,"). I
procede by ANALOGY. The method of philosophy (real phil. -- FIRST phil.)
is analogy. "It is like..." "It is as if..." I learned this from van de
Vate and Joe Campbell (analogy was his primary tool as well and his
expertise w/ it makes him -- in my book -- a great *philosopher*), but
this was primarily Hegel's great insight. That's the beuaty of the
*Phenominolgy*! Hegel tours the museum and deals w/ each painting on it's
own terms and shows how each movement in art (to press our current
analogy) leads -- naturally and logically -- into the movement which
follows it, making it all part of one great, beuatiful story. Hegel never
claims that philosophy stops at point X and that all views before or after
it are somehow off the mark. (He says that history culminates in his
philosophical system -- but he means that history ends there the way the
past ends in the present [the way art history "culminates" in late
20th-cen. Postmodernism]. The present is always the "end" of history. And
he says explicitly that philosophy has no ability to predict the future --
it only functions retrosprctivly.)
So, Bodvar, this is the angle I am coming from. I guess, if you
want to, you could say that, in my view, everything is, in this sense,
"ordinary" (if you are willing to say that every painting is an "ordinary"
painting).
_____________________
"The truth is always allegory."
--R.M. Pirsig
"We now might take a tip from Kant who suggested that metaphysical
staments should always carry an implied 'as if.' We should:
Play as if reality (experience) = value.
Play as if this value is divided into Dynamic and static value.
Play as if sq is divided into 4 levels or phases of 'evolutionary'
development."
--Me, from a previous post
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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