Hi again,
This was written before I got David B. answer on PART I, but I think it
will answer the central question on which we DO disagree : what is the
social level.
You're are right David, that's the crux of this discussion. Since my
first days in the Squad (not so long ago : three month) I've been making
calls to define the last two levels. Because we don't know anything
about them. Nothing. SOM has muddled everything in those fields, so we
have to start from near-stratch. Pirsig talks about them a lot in Lila,
but he does it in a very intuitive way, from which we don't learn much.
The "machine code" metaphor isn't explained for those levels. No
generalizations are made, no explanation, no theories, nothing. Only
examples about Hitler and the Church and the Victorians. This is
understandable : Pirsig had to lay the foundations of the MOQ, and could
not be expected to add the whole structure above them. That's what WE
are here for.
He convieniently includes SOM science in the lower two levels (their
right place I believe), give priceless insight about the relationship
between the levels, and then leaves it to us to fill the blanks.
How are we going to agree on anything if we don't do our homework about
the levels ? Only the basics of the MOQ can be discussed in such an void
of definitions (and there has been priceless research done in this
field, I'm not denigrating anything the LS and MD have discussed until
now). Still, the fact is : until we know more about the last two levels,
any discussion about them is bound to be "mind-numbingly unclear", as
Strawson puts it. BTW, I found one of his articles where he states very
seriously that we act in completely deterministic ways. I guess I see
where he's coming from now !... ;)
OK, the solipsist/materialist/mystic MOQ seems to be solved by now (or
is it ? I'd like to put this behind me).
BTW David, does your post mean that you agree with me on this point now
?
You said you're a mystic philosopher, which is the only position to have
in the MOQ frame of reference, but not if the picture I paint, the
paradoxical nature of the intellectual level containing the others, is
now OK with you (as long as we agree that it is not ALL in the
Intellect, just the symbolic aspect of it).
Just a quick note will be enough, but leaving such a fundamental thing
unclear will haunt us later, I believe.
And David, don't worry. Most of the time you are crystal clear for me.
:)
But I'd still like you to answer me on this point which you "sweep under
the carpet" a bit.
So, leaving this aside for the moment, I resume my critic of your post
(hence PART II) and I hope answer your comment on social level mediation
:
David wrote :
> WHAT FLEW OUT OF WHERE!?!
> It might be tempting to think that just about any human utterence is an
> intellectual activity simply because language is symbolic and that its
> use implies a certain capacity for abstraction. It even easier to
> believe language is primarily intellectual if you happen to spend a lot
> of time with intellecutuals in a discussion group. But the fact is even
> a chimpanzee can recognize itself in a funhouse mirror. This implies
> that he has an abstract concept of himself and that he can compensate
> for the distorted reflections. And its pretty well understood that
> chimps can learn to use language, and can even invent grammatically
> correct sentences, with real world meaning behind. Its no stomping
> horse. Certain animals really can use symbols to communicate. But I
> think we'd all agree that there is no such thing as an intellectual
> monkey.
>
> I'll over state the case for dramatic purposes and say that most human
> utterances NOT intellectual at all. Even well constructed sentences with
> a impressively sophisticated vocabulary are not genuinely intellectual,
> they're just social level values in formal attire. At least most of the
> time, our ''ideas" are just common sense in a tuxcedo. I'd say language
> is PRIMARILY social. And its a huge part of our overall thought process,
> its a huge chunk of our total consciousness and according the the MOQ
> that's the way it should be. To live outside the mythos is to be insane.
> We are suspended in language. We are suspended in the mythos. It means
> the same thing.
>
THIS really got me angry. David, asking someone about the weather IS an
intellectual activity. Low-Quality one if you want, and larded with the
social need of communication, agreed. But it is. The social functions of
Language are very few :
- the phatic, which means the signals used to indicate the state of the
communication. Like, "Hey ! Did you know that...". "Hey" is the phatic
component, the rest is intellectual. Or what I would call greetings :
Hi, thank you, Bye, etc... They all indicate that communication is
desired, is at an end, was appreciated, etc. It controls the flow of
information, and the format of it, which is to be expected since any
discussion takes place inside a social frame.
- the perfomative, which means to perfom a social function with language
: "I declare you husband and wife".
And that's it, there's nothing else (nothing I can think of, except
perhaps jokes). I guess David would like to add many things like : "how
do you do ?" or "nice weather, isn't it ?" or any kind of dull
conversation we have every day with an endless number of people, but
this is not social, not purely social at least. This dull exchange of
information is partly done for social purposes, but there is always the
possibility of deviating from the format to do something else than just
saying : "I'm a normal member of society" (which is also what we do
when using such dull talk). Any question about your health can turn into
a full-fledged discussion about medecine, for example.
- Hi, how are you ?
- Well, not so good actually, I've had terrible headaches, lately.
- Really ? You should use some aspirin.
- I tried, it didn't work.
- Then it must be stress. My sister always have them when she's
stressed.
etc...
Still pretty dull, but some information is exchanged : some solutions
are proposed, their worth is discussed, then hypothesis are made,
probably to be followed by a new advice.
Think about it : when you ask people about their health, their family,
their job, if the answers are "OK. They're fine. No problem.", the
conversation ENDS. Nothing has to be transmitted, and you're probably a
bit put off. You'll even think : "Well, he probably didn't want to
talk".
The urge to communicate may well be social, but if the intellectual urge
of argumentation, information-sharing and criticism isn't filled, then
there's nothing to discuss and it ends. The information shared might be
trivial, the answers hopelessly stereotypical, and the overall exchange
dull, but this only means nothing Dynamic occurred in your discussion.
No new ideas, no challenging PoV, no DQ, but plenty of dull SQ you
already knew about, or aren't interested in. Of course a discussion can
also be a hopeless pat-on-the-back exchange of what is thought to be
GOOD static information : how bad is the government, how the taxes are
way to high, that we should try to restore some order in those unruly
neighborhoods, etc. But even then, if nobody disagrees or tries to
develop the arguments a bit, chances are the conversation won't last.
And then, you come to moq_discuss to disagree with people and tell them
how they're wrong and misunderstand you... :)
You come here for some high-Quality discussion, admit it. No matter how
you rail about the amount of triviality we wade in, you come here
because you want to communicate something, and to fish out some DQ, if
you can find it.
If you go to a IRC forum, you'll find out that nobody stays long if they
don't find somebody to talk to (except perhaps for some lurkers in
search of a girl to woo).
So what we have here again is an intellectual use of the social need of
communication. A conversation isn't just social communication, it is the
perpetuation of the mythos (the static intellect), the search for
agreement and the need for information-sharing. Most of the time what
you get is static noise, but sometimes, you get DQ. And that's why you
continue doing it, BTW.
> The problem is that SOM pretends it isn't so. The lack of social level
> mediation in the scientific process, has a similar effect on our
> understanding of language. It's no accident that Western Epistemology
> ran into a dead end and split into Biology and Linguistics, where they
> ran into more dead ends. (Not that we haven't learned alot about
> physiology and languages along the way, but they both failed to solve
> any of the classic epistemological riddles like the mind body problem.)
> In terms of language and culture, this sin of ommission has resulted in
> reducing myths and gods to a kind of primitive bad science, it sees
> social level patterns as intellectual too. But it sees them as obsolete
> antiques, valuable only as a curiosity. But this view fails to see the
> difference between two different levels of reality. I can't think of a
> better way to describe the difference than with the real life examples
> provided in our favorite book
>
> I believe Pirsig uses Hitler as an example to make this point exactly.
> The problem with the third Reich wasn't that it was predicated on bad
> intellectual patterns, rather it was based on social level values
> disguised as real ideas. It was a reaction to bad intellectual patterns.
> It's anti-intellectual impulses led to a degeneration into the lower
> level. He made the same complaints about the Victorians, pointing out
> that the old saying that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" is a
> Victorian sentiment. I'd add so-called Creationists to the list of those
> who are most obvious in making this mistake. They pretend a creation
> myth is scientific or they really don't understand the difference. The
> confusion paints a very weird world. Their Earth is 6,000 years old,
> people come back from the dead and virgins bear children. All this is a
> symptom of SOM's larger mistake. Its part of the same problem.
>
Here again, I think you try to limit what's intellectual. The
Creationists and Hitler had(have) BAD intellectual ideas (Pirsig made
one of his few mistakes here), but they are Ideas nonetheless. That one
would like to see them eradicated (the Ideas, I mean) is OK in my book,
but saying they're not Intellectual is self-defeating. If any Idea
people had in the past can be called non-Ideas when they're proven (if
this can be done) wrong or bad, then the concept of the Intellect has to
go.
If in a thousand year someone wakes up with a better metaphysics than
the
MOQ, and then says the MOQ wasn't intellectual, then nothing is but
provisionaly.
Hitler ideas about races and the best form of government (national
socialism) were bad (immoral), but they were ideas. Why do you think
Hitler went into so much pain to create an alternate history for the
Aryan race, where they were heroes unjustly toppled by the evil Jews,
and so on ?
He was trying to create a mythology to support, validate and GIVE
MEANING to the social organization he had transformed Germany into.
Science didn't stop then (U-boats and other german weapons testify to
this) but it was again put back into the role of servant of society.
This mythology was rightly deemed immoral by other nations and crushed.
But the battle was clearly an ideological one.
SOM is also deemed immoral by the MOQ, since it is saying that the moral
code of the social level is irrelevent : does this mean that SOM isn't
intellectual ?
As I've said before, the upper levels influence their lower parent as
much as they are influenced by it. Don't ants and wolves and monkeys
have a social organization ? But do they have a mythology ? It's
important to draw a line there, or we'll be mixing old static
intellectual patterns with social ones.
What is society ? It's a complex codified behaviour adopted by a group
of organisms. But the intellectual level changed all that by
superimposing stories on the behaviours, which led to other behaviours
(rituals) and so on. This is pretty scarce but this post seems to be
long enough and I'll expound later (if I do at all).
> . At the end of LILA, Pirsig recomends reading Campbell's "The Masks of
> God" as a way learn about our mythos. But I'm sure that's just a good
> starting point. Myths aren't just bad science or low quality
> intellectual constructs, the are the carriers of social level values.
> The myths are totally tied up in our language. Jesus, it would take a
> Herculean effort to open that Pandora's box ;-)
>
Yes, they are carrier of social values. So is the Constitution of the
USA. They are conflicting mythologies. The only difference is in how
much value they give to the Intellectual level. In case you haven't
noticed, science existed before the advent of SOM. Mathematics,
medicine, astronomy, architecture, all those existed before SOM, and in
what you want to call an "Intellectual vacuum" ! This is ludicrous.
This intellect wasn't free of his social shackles, that's agreed, but it
existed. That's a crucial question your explanation of the mythos leaves
unanswered : why did science and technology exist before Intellect ? How
could that be ?
Reading the 'Masks of God' (I'm in the third tome, and started
them 3 years ago !) is very interesting, while a bit overloaded with
details (hence my slow speed). It shows that our forebears had a very
complex understanding of the world, in both its static and dynamic
aspects. Many things can be found there, including how the "primitives"
had a very good grasp of how the world come to us (I doubtless owe them
some of my ideas), the significance and power of a symbol, and the
nature of reality. That the layman thought of gods as "supernatural
celebrities"
is to be expected, but this doesn't do justice to the message contained
in the stories.
Our ghosts, as Roger calls them, aren't in another level, they're just
more evolved. It's the difference between protozoans and mammals we're
dealing with here, not the one between atoms and organisms. As such, as
you point out below, the story of this evolution is very valuable for
us. It's our roots.
> The main idea here is that the levels are not only real, they're
> essential. Language and Myth and all the other aspects of social values
> are a level of reality as much as the biosphere is. The idea of social
> level mediation, in this respect, demands that we recognize that
> language and myth are loaded with meaning and value. The social level
> values are different and less evolved than intellectual ones, but they
> are still necessary and Good. We can apply the intellect to our myths in
> a way that doesn't seek to over-glorify nor dismiss. We can comprehend
> the meaning without stooping to blind faith and literal interpetations.
> We can use the intellect to re-discover the meaning of our myths instead
> of using it to discredit and debunk.
>
Except for the "it's all social" idea, I basically agree here.
The problem is that we cannot use old mythos to give us directions for
the social level. We can't use christianity to tell us how to live our
lives on the social level, and the MOQ for the intellectual one. This
would create another schizophrenic state for which I don't see any
issue. Even if we try mediation it won't work. I cannot see myself
telling a good christian he should use abortion if the MOQ says it's
right. The MOQ isn't only a philosophy, it's also a religion in a way (a
bit like Buddhism). Either you adopt it as your mythos or you don't.
The middle way will do you no good here. You'll just end up in a
cultural relativism where nothing stands up for long.
We don't have to "debunk", but we have to come up with better answers
than the old mythos has.
The social level mediation would for me be more aptly named intellectual
level mediation (with the social). It is the drive to find answers which
don't disregard the social moral code (the integrity and perpetuation of
society over biological urges) while at the same time leaving the
Intellect free of schackles. Remember, the reason why Pirsig thought
Communism was more moral than Capitalism was because it was a society
controlled by Intellect (unfortunately, by SOM-Intellect). The aim for
us is to create a society controlled by MOQ-Intellect, where the Quality
of life isn't disregarded.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you call "social level mediation", but
since you're not very specific about it, the ball is on your side. Try
to explain how we are to do it, what good it would do, and perhaps (if I
may ask such a thing) give an actual example of it.
> I'm all out of time, but I hope to work DQ into this picture too. ONE
> MORE MONTH! ONE MORE MONTH! DMB
>
Well, it seems like we now have all the time in the world to discuss
this, David, so what do you think ?
Denis
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