Bodvar and Squad
For those of you who are still listening, I've decided that the
intellectual level is "thinking" but it is not equivalent to awareness
per se. Awareness includes the zombie/zen mind/intuitive/dynamic
awareness, and, for humans it includes social and biological awareness
as well.
Intellectually we may be aware of these other awarenesses and we can put
them into words, ie "I want a cookie", but these are abstractions of the
actual biological or social awareness.
I've forgotten who said it now and I can't face sorting through the
trash to find it, but someone said that we're getting confused because
the social and intellectual levels are so deeply intertwined. I think
this is true and it's because of the way the two have evolved molding
and mediating each other as they go. The social level appropriates the
intellectual level for its own purposes. Thus you have ideas which are
intellectual patterns but which are held for social reasons. If you can
separate the valuing of the idea in itself and the valuing of holding
the same ideas as your social group then you have the separation of the
social and intellectual level. The social level is mostly about
following everyone else. The intellectual level is any mental
abstraction of the world, ie thinking.
>From chap 8
"One seeks the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with
the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this
explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something
better comes along. One can then examine intellectual realities the same
way one examines paintings in an art gallery ... There are many sets of
intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more
quality than others, but that we can do so is, in part, the result of
our history and current patterns of values. "
The metaphysics of quality is as much an intellectual pattern as the
SOM; the ultimate reality is mystic. Pirsig is perfectly clear about
that. Philosophers should see themselves as artists painting
intellectual pictures of reality. So is the SOM the intellectual level?
I'm still not clear why you, Bodvar, insist on this, but, for the time
being, I will stick with the idea that the intellect is thought, because
I believe that's what Pirsig says, it seems to be the simplest
explanation and I've yet to see anyone come up with anything better.
Diana
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