Hi All
Late as usual! I'm not going to try and go back over all of the recent posts as it
would take an age, so I'll pick just a few to get into the conversation
On 23 Dec 98, at 9:58, Mary Wittler wrote:
> 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.
This is where I think some misunderstandings arise. We're talking here about
social patterns and assuming that they refer to institutional forms - universities,
tribes, mutual admiration clubs etc. The social level, consisting of social patterns
of Value is more inclusive (or wider ranging) than this. SocPoV's not only create
the above groups, they also create persons or to be more accurate SocPoV's are
responsible for that part of the person that is a society. To put it in plain English a
person is a society of cells in the same way that an army is a society of soldiers.
There's more though. A person is a combination of all of the levels whereas an
army is not. An Army, as a society, has little to do with intellect. That the
persons in the Army possess intellect is irrelevant to the social patterns that
create the Army. The person exists in a society of other persons. The two are
created by the same PoV's. Intellect in persons arises from the social patterns of
the cells of the person.
> 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.
Pirsigs use of the Victorians is interesting. They were a hugely dominant Anglo-
American (and by implication European) social force and their influence on the
rest of the world in terms of social value is difficult to estimate. Also their
influence in terms of science and philosophy - particularly empiricist philosophy -
is enormous. The Social/Intellectual conflict in Victorian society was the point at
which Intellect finally freed itself from society and became a seperate level
although the roots of this conflict originate in the French and American
Revolutions. This can be seen in science, politics, philosophy, psychology and
religious thought of the time. Darwin, Marx, Mill, Freud and the contributors to
Essays and Reviews (whose names escape me for the moment) are in direct
opposition to the dominant social patterns of the time - hence the reactions to
their ideas.
> 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.
I think that SOLAQI is a retrograde step from the ideas in SOTAQI. I don't see
why a particular branch of mathematics (or philosophy if you prefer) constitutes
the Quality Intellect. Most logics are a limited and poor form of reasoning and fall
way below the standard required to support an SO view of the world. I may be
wrong but if so convince me otherwise.
On 24 Dec 98, at 2:04, David Buchanan wrote:
> Who said snails have intellect? That's laughable.
Why? It may be a very low value of intellect but this doesn't make it non-existent
or laughable.
> Bees and ants have social patterns, but mostly we think of the social
> lives of wolves or chimps. They're highly evolved, intelligent mammals
> who've been finely tuned in the last few million years, just like us. We
> can relate to their societies. We must have lived in societies just like
> them in our ancient past and vestages still remain.
All of the hymenoptera (and some other insects) have highly evolved social
behaviour involving ritual, enslavement, manipulation of other species, social
hierarchies and organization etc. and in many ways show a level of sophistication
far in advance of most mammalian groups. Bees and wasps also have a complex
means of communication which borders on abstraction. That homo sapiens are
members of the class mammalia generally produces great bias towards assuming
that mammals are at the top of very suspect Victorian hierarchical structure of
flora and fauna. As with SocPoV's (see above) I think we are making a mistake in
continuing an outdated mode of thought into that described by the MoQ.
> P.S. I don't know where the other mystics went, but I'm absolutely
> convinced the MOQ is mysticism. The very heart and soul of the central
> issues are involved in this dispute. I'll bet you each a dollar I can
> produce evidence that the author himself and at least one professional
> academic philosopher believes the MOQ is mystical. I believe that to think
> otherwise makes it nearly impossible to discuss Pirsig's work in any
> meaningful way and only demonstates a misunderstanding of myticism or the
> MOQ or both. I know that's a harsh statement, but I'm very worried about
> the quality of our debate.
In reply On 24 Dec 98, at 19:27, Mary Wittler wrote:
> Believe it or not, I agree with you. But at the same time, I will fight
> tooth and nail when Dynamic Quality is equated with god, or Zen, or most
> particularly with a New Age "awareness". These terms have been
> misappropriated to support so many things that are not dynamic and
> certainly not of high quality, that I really must shy away from them.
I'm not sure that this continuing division of mysticism and empiricism is
particularly useful or relevant. I was under the impression that it was Pirsig's
intention to do away with these concepts. Mysticism is a western term for non-
western thought and belief and is often derisory. Neither empiricism, idealism,
rationism or mysticism are capable of providing a complete and inclusive
explanation of reality. To be honest, I'm not sure that the MoQ does either. All we
can say at the moment is that the MoQ provides a better explanation than all
previous attempts. I do agree with Mary though, that the attempt to equate Zen,
God or any other mystical concept with DQ is ludicrous. They may be a small
part of DQ but to say otherwise degrades DQ in particular and the MoQ in general.
Horse
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"Prejudice is the greatest labour saving device known to man,
it enables one to form an opinion without having to go to
the trouble of checking the facts."
Quote from Stephen Fry - Source Unknown
(Could be Oscar Wilde ??)
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