Mary:
. 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?
Glove:
mainly i think he means it to be used as a pragmatic tool, and as such, has
many different meanings used in an underlying context of the four static
levels plus an undefinable Dynamic Quality. i fail to see where Pirsig
actually defines the intellect in any fashion in a concrete kind of way. it
supports many truths.
Mary:
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.
Glove:
part of the problem here is different points of view. first of all, what
Pirsig calls Dynamic/static quality is not a split the way we normally
envision a split. if we split something, it is now two somethings. we have
put boundaries around each "thing" and named it. when we approach this
problem we are now discussing from that point of view, it is unsolvable.
the first division in the Metaphysics of Quality is between every "thing" we
experience, static quality, and every "something", Dynamic Quality, that we
do not. "things" are what we agree on. and this happens primarily via social
level functions. but there is no way to envision what "something" is, no way
to conceptualize of "it" at all. there is no split that we are aware of! we
are trapped in static quality everyday awareness and forced to try and
explain the unexplainable.
thats why we find value in the four static levels of the Metaphysics of
Quality. and even though i know i am only using a metaphor for reality, i
find it is helpful to simplify the complexity by compartmentizing "it",
Dynamic Quality, into creation and discreation of the four static level
patterns of values. i am not saying that this is all that this
compartmentizing of "it" does, but from experience that seems a very apt
description of the reality i see around me and a Good starting point to
forming agreements with Force of Value in the Metaphysics of Quality.
in this context, the four levels dominate one another "instantaneously" via
what we statically view as a sequence, the lowest, inorganic, thru the
highest, the intellect. that is the nature of Dynamic Quality, which
permeates all four discrete levels of the Metaphysics of Quality. we are
trying to explain the "nagual" with the "tonal", as don Juan would say, and
we overlook that which we are unaware of.
Mary:
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.
Glove:
i do not agree. almost all "thinking" (as i assume you use the word) arises
at the social level, which appropriates the biological layer for its own
use. only indirectly does "thinking" arise at the biological level. it is
ALWAYS mediated by the social level. we "think" what is of value culturally
to "think". this is why i think Pirsig spent so much time on the Victorian
value system and its stranglehold on the social level, constrasting this to
the wild-west and the Dynamic freedom of the Indians.
memory and basic pattern recognition are social level activies, yet there is
no "spot" we can point to in the body and say there! that is where they are
contained! they cannot be biological level functions unless we can point to
them. i may seem stubborn about this, but it is of primary importance to see
where i am coming from. if you do, then the pieces start dropping into place
rather nicely. instincts MUST be intellect level functions then. they are
beyond culturally instilled social patterns of value and in fact oppose them
many times. yet there is always a sychronicity about this opposition because
of the underlying Forces of value.
we do not "know" how instincts work. we can presume they are inplanted
genetically into our DNA perhaps, or "hard-wired" into the brain. yet with
all the research that has been done, no one has yet identified just how
consciousness arises. perhaps one day we will, who know?
then we will agree with each other on this very fundamental principle :)
best wishes,
glove
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