From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Thu Jul 21 2005 - 04:06:03 BST
Bo, Arlo, Matt, Reinier, and All --
For some time now, I've been learning from the MoQ about a mysterious
"quality" something called Intellect.
It has been variously described as "common education, "cultural language",
"building up analogues", and a "historical world-view". It is explained as
a kind of socio-cultural environment which man participates in, is shaped
by, and somehow helps to form, although the precise dynamics by which this
occurs are apparently still in contention. These ideas summon up in my mind
some mystical "data base" that hangs over the earth -- like a library in the
sky -- but is accessible only to inhabitants of those cultures that have
attained a certain stage of evolutionary development. Nowhere in these
postings have I seen a reference to the cognitive process more commonly
known as "conscious thought".
Perhaps because I haven't mastered the technique of absorbing knowledge from
this great socio/cultural reservoir, but had always understood "intellect"
to be an attribute of the individual, I find the concept of an objective,
non-proprietary intellect very difficult to comprehend. Maybe this is also
what Bo was trying to express when he posted this comment on behalf of his
SOL:
> If "the act of thinking" is defined as intellect and thinking about
> imaginary numbers is non-S/O intellect, then people of old -
> before intellect according to the MOQ - were intellectuals by
> thinking about how to get the next meal, and pure intellectuals if
> thinking about imaginary things, dragons and such?
>
> When at this MOQ site you are sort of committed to
> speak moqish, so what is your explanation for that explicit SOL
> statement in ZMM?
"Applied mathematics is not the same as pure mathematics, and
calculating is applied mathematics. I do think that mathematical
thinking would not have arisen without more general S/O thinking, but
in itself, in the act of thinking, it is not S/O."
Was it this statement, and others like it, by MoQ's author that has pushed
Intellect out of the bounds of human activity and into the realm of the
ineffable? Is it possible that we could be deliberately forcing this
extraordinary and ill-defined notion of Intellect simply to make the Quality
heirarchy workable?
Or consider this dialog between Arlo and Matt posted on 7/20:
Arlo says:
> I don't read this as "intellect is molded by social culture". I read this
> that "intellect" is an emergent construct founded entirely within the
> analogues of a culture's mythos. This may be nitpicking, but phrased the
> other way it suggests that intellect is an "objective" outside entity that
> is acted upon by social pressures.
Matt replies:
> Absolutely right. That's why I've been after the social/intellectual
> distinction for some time now. I think the distinction gets Pirsig into
> trouble and is one of the things that turns him into a
crypto-essentialist.
> In fact, I'd go you one further: I'm not even sure what "intellect" is
that
> is an "emergent construct." I'm not sure what this "logos" is, this
> "mythos-turn-logos-though-still-mythos" as Pirsig puts it. I'm not sure
> that the creation of philosophy, which is what everyone is talking about
> with different names, logos, intellect, S/O distinction, reason, symbol
> manipulation, reflection, whatever, was as important as Pirsig, or the
> philosophical tradition as a whole, thinks it is. I think the important
> thing happening in Greece at the time was the creation of
democracy....etc, etc.
Gentlemen, if I may be so bold, I'd like to bring Intellect back down to
earth and discuss it as a proprietary human function. In other words, I
suggest that we drop the socio-cultural sophistication (otherwise coined
"philosophology") at least long enough to consider the thought processes of
the individual and how ideas are developed in the everyday world of
experience. Such a discussion could encompass age-old philosophical topics
like epistemology, sensibility, memory association, cognitive awareness,
rationality, and conceptualization.
I think we are long overdue for an exploration of Consciousness itself --
not in the collective or historical sense, but as the uniquely human process
we all depend on to convert sensory awareness into our tangible experience
of the physical world.
Or, is that too much for a sometime dissenter to ask?
Essentially (I hope) still yours,
Ham
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