From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 22:35:08 GMT
Dear Sam (and David B.),
You asked David B. 15 Feb 2003 23:28:54 -0000:
'what ... constitutes the "necessity of the social level"? ... what social
institutions, customs - rituals?? - etc
etc are needed in order to preserve or develop a functioning intellectual
level?'
David B. answered 15 Feb 2003 18:02:58 -0700:
'It's what makes us human, more than animals. It's what allows us to think
and talk, gives us our desires and
conceptual categories, ideas of rights and wrong. It's most of what we are.
It's as necessary as the body.'
You go on asking 16 Feb 2003 18:38:31 -0000:
'Are all those ... elements ... products of fertilization from the
intellectual level, or are they intrinsic to the social?'
David B. answered 16 Feb 2003 15:07:19 -0700:
'they are products of the social level ... All languages, civilizations,
societies, myths, morals, religions and rituals are products of the social
level. It's huge and ancient. It is everything about us that is neither
animal nor intellectual. It's everything that makes us human.'
You come to the point 18 Feb 2003 16:39:29 -0000:
'how do *you* understand intellect to be separated from all that?'
I don't think the social level as David describes it can be properly
separated from the intellectual level (not to be confused with
'intellect' or 'intelligence' understood as biological capacities of our
species). Pirsig's descriptions aren't much better.
If Pirsig writes in chapter 30 of 'Lila':
'These rituals may be the connecting link between the social and
intellectual levels of evolution. One can imagine primitive song-rituals and
dance-rituals associated with certain cosmology stories, myths, which
generated the first primitive religions. From these the first intellectual
truths could have been derived. If ritual always comes first and
intellectual principles always come later, then ritual cannot always be a
decadent corruption of intellect.'
you can interpret this in different extreme ways:
1) Religious (song- & dance-)rituals (associated with ...), being the
connecting link between the social and intellectual levels, are the first
intellectual patterns of values, the basis of the intellectual level (not
just a decadent corruption of it).
2) These rituals, along with the cosmology stories, myths and resulting
primitive religions belong to the social level and only the intellectual
truths derived from them belong to the intellectual level.
I think Pirsig's definition of the intellectual level (from 'Lila's Child')
as 'the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that
stand for patterns of experience' would indicate the first interpretation is
closest to what he -in retrospect- meant. The cosmology stories, myths and
primitive religions and maybe even the rituals themselves can clearly be
understood as 'symbols that stand for patterns of experience'.
My way of separating the social and intellectual level in the context of
this Pirsig quote is that such rituals -being a kind of 'machine language
interface'- belong BOTH to the social level (when interpreted as unthinking
behavior copied between generations in processes focussed on seeking
'status/celebrity') AND to the intellectual level (when interpreted as
symbolizing/referring to experience outside the rituals themselves, e.g.
hunting experiences, the experience of seasonal rhythms, experience of birth
and death etc.). They are in Pirsig's words from chapter 12 of 'Lila': 'a
tiny isthmus of information', BOTH a 'final achievement toward which [the
lower level] aims', a 'design goal', AND 'the lowest element of the lowest
level [patterns of the next higher level]'. 'Even in this narrow isthmus
between these two sets of static patterns ... there [is] still no direct
interchange of meaning. The same machine language instruction [is] a
completely different entity within two different sets of patterns.'
It's a pity that Pirsig in chapter 12 only compared his
hardware-software-novel analogy only with 'trying to explain social moral
patterns in terms of inorganic chemistry patterns' and not with the
relation -over two 'machine level interfaces'- between intellectual patterns
of value and biological patterns of value. He didn't even mention what is
the 'machine level interface' between biological and social patterns of
value. So we have to choose for ourselves. My choice (for the interface
between social and intellectual patterns of values) is both rituals and
symbolic language (e.g. the letters that are forming this text).
Returning to your first question (and broadening it somewhat): What in each
level is needed to preserve or develop the next level?
Carbon compounds (and more specifically DNA and proteins) from the inorganic
level are needed for the biological level, for 'life' to develop.
Elementary behaviors that have no rigid ('hardwired') relations with
previous behaviors or with outside circumstances from the biological level
are needed for the social level, for 'status' to develop.
Complex patterns of unthinking behavior that have no direct survival value
from the social level are needed for the intellectual level, for 'meaning'
to develop.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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