Hi Glove and all,
>Glove:
>i would rather say that Quality is awareness. i dont think we can define
>awareness in any other terms but a Quality Event.
>Glove:
>in the Metaphysics of Quality the intellect level is only PART of the
>awareness of Quality Events.
>because the intellect conceives the Quality Event doesnt
>necessarily lead to the conclusion that it IS the Quality Event.
>by my comments, you see i avoid saying that the intellect "does" anything
>other than perceive in general terms and allow the social level to funnel
>those perceptions into restraints called static latches. each level has its
>own moral values in the Metaphysics of Quality and one of the values the
>intellect possesses is a drive to Dynamic freedom, away from the
restrictive
>social level patterns of value. this is where "forces of value" come into
>the equation.
>
>i make no attempt to assign intellect to any other level, yet at the same
>time i do not think we can discount it either. just as we cannot discount
>instinct as intellect level behavior because birds and bees do not sit
>around and philosophize about Quality.
>
>i am not sure what this does to the rest of your argument but i fear you
may
>have to revise it drastically.
Glove, I'm beginning to think we are not as far apart as I first thought. I
still have a few bones to pick, though. :-)
I now think we are arguing over the definition of intellect. I think if we
could come to an agreement on that, most of the other issues we've discussed
would fall away. This became clear to me when you mentioned that instinct
is intellectual level behavior (see above).
I think Pirsig himself confused the issue by not clearly defining intellect
in "Lila". Other people have pointed this out too. I kind of had to back
into it, by starting with his conclusions and working backwards into what
his basic assumptions must have been. Since I've just finished reading the
book a lot of stuff is fresh in my mind. Pirsig goes on and on about
Victorian social values, and contrasts these with intellectual values
throughout several chapters in the last half of the book. But what does he
mean really by intellectual values? And how do these values relate to what
he must assume intellect to mean?
I'll skip over a lot of the thought process I went through and just say that
I don't think Pirsig intended for all intellect (all thinking) to equate
with the contents of the intellectual level. Pirsig kind of confused the
issue by talking about intellect in general and then using the same word to
describe the intellectual level. I don't think that was what he meant. It
got worse when he stated that intellect arose from society. Since he didn't
clearly define intellect in the first place, one would naturally assume he
meant that all "thought" arose from socPoVs. But this can't be true.
Intellect, the process of thinking, in my mind actually arose in a
rudimentary form, from the biological level. It came into existence in the
biological level, and rudimentary social values arose from the biological as
well. If you can agree that all thinking includes things like instinct,
memory, and basic pattern recognition, then I think this must be so.
However, Pirsig goes deeper into it and introduces the Victorian social
level values as being in opposition to the intellectual level. He makes a
big deal out of this and brings it up again and again. By implication, I
don't think Pirsig was saying that Victorians were opposed to things like
basic pattern recognition, memory, or instinct per se, I think he meant that
Victorians were opposed to intellect where intellect is defined as certain
types of thinking - specifically those types of thinking that placed
conclusions based on objectivity above conclusions based on social value.
This is where I think you and I might be parting company, and this is also
why I so quickly latched onto Bodvar's SOLAQI. I think Bo has condensed the
Victorian conflict quite succinctly by pronouncing SO logic as the
definition of the intellectual level.
What are your thoughts (Glove and everyone else)?
Best regards,
Mary
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