At 10:16 AM -0600 12/8/98, glove wrote:
>Mary, Pirsig uses spiders on LSD in Lila as an analogy of a hallucinogen
>uncovering a more perfect reality underlying the one we normally perceive
>of. i would say spiders are a perfect example of a species by-passing the
>social level and using the intellect directly. why did the US government
>conduct LSD tests on spiders in the first place?>
>
>because baby spiders are not taught to weave webs by adult spiders. they
>just seem to "know" how to build a web. where does that "knowledge" come
>from? prior to the LSD experiment the concensus was that the spider, under
>the influence of a hallucinogenic drug, would be unable to spin a web.
>however, just the opposite happened. the spiders began spinning webs of
>abnormal beauty and perfection.
I disagree with the characteriziation of the unlearned behavior of spiders
as intellect. It's important to keep in mind that Pirsig was talking
metaphorically here about the spider's physical web and his intellectual
web. The critical difference is that while the spider was manipulating the
weaving of its web differently because its biological mind was affected by
the LSD, Pirsig was manipulating his *ideas* differently. It is the
existence of particular patterns of these ideas that defines intellect. If
it were not so, I would be committing a crime agains intellect each time I
stomped on a spider!
>i am unsure what this means in terms of the Metaphysics of Quality, but i
>would say that the social level, while it contains a great deal of value, is
>not absolutely essential for the survival of the species. the intellect
>level is absolutely essential however, and this only reaffirms the
>hierachial positions of the levels and places the intellect as the highest
>moral static quality pattern of value.
I agree with your conclusion in terms of the ordering of the levels, but
not with the reasoning. It must be clearly kept in mind that society is the
mediating factor in controlling biology. Were we to let our society
crumble, our species would near extinction. I think society is a powerful
force for preservation of species, as it by definition keeps the group
(species) going at the expense, if necessary, of the individual entity.
Cheers,
Keith
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