From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Aug 09 2003 - 17:50:35 BST
Bodvar, Sam and all:
Good to hear from you, Sam. When time allows, I'd be interesting in your
thoughts about America's newly installed gay Bishop. (Under a different
thread name, of course.) Anyway, on to the topic...
Bo said:
Sam Norton had dug out a Wittgenstein quote on that issue. I am unable to
find it (June sometime) but I remember that David agreed with it. ...
If my memory serves me Wittgenstein maintains that thinking is
language internalized, but "internalized" does it make any difference,
isn't language already internal "manipulations of symbols"? It truly is.
Words are abstract symbols manipulated by the rules of grammar and
syntax, yet, the question is not if language-as-thinking is
manipulation of symbols, rather if manipulation of symbols is the
(value of the) intellectual level?
dmb says:
The question in this thread is about Lila's ability to percieve intellectual
quality. And it is often assumed that an ability to use language must be
intellectual because it involves the manipulation of symbols. On that
premise it is easy to assume that Lila can see intellectual qualtiy. But as
Sam and Wittgenstein and many others have pointed out, our common sense
assumptions about language are mistaken and so the premise is false. Just
yesterday, to use a completely different example, I heard a radio interview
with a academic type who has just written a book about the connection
between language and music. (Apologies for the lack of detail on this.) His
conclusion is that way back in our evolutionary history, language and music
were the same thing. They were as yet undifferentiated from each other and
functioned as a single thing....
PIRSIG at the end of chapter 30:
"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.
... Their sequence in history suggests that principles emerge from ritual,
not the other way around. That is, we don't perform religious rituals
because we believe in God. We believe in God because we perform religious
rituals. If so, that's an important principle in itself."
dmb says:
Applying this principle to language itself, and I think this is what
Wittgenstien was getting at, we can say that we don't speak because we have
intellect. We have intellect because we talk. And so on the issue of Lila
the character, I think its safe to say that her ability to talk doesn't
imply an ability to percieve intellectual quality. And speaking itself can
not rightly be cited as an example of the "manipulation of symbols".
Bodvar said:
... the "mechanism" that Pirsig touches on in LILA that all levels
resist an outgrowths from themselves even if is a Quality growth, they
only see corruption of own value: A biological organism just wants to
live not to give its life for the good of the group. Society doesn't like
anyone questioning their pillars be it religious faith or national
interests, and now Intellect panics to see one of the its "ideas"
degrading it from the noble position of thinking which enables it to
contain all existence. And you all seem only too eager to serve
intellect's interest.
dmb says:
As unlikely as it may seem in a forum like this, the intellect needs
defending. I'm protesting the notion that every normal person percieves
intellectual quality more or less equally. Your objections, Bo, are very far
away from all that. I basically agree with the "mechanism" you describe, but
I think it is misapplied in this case. The higher values are inperceptible
to the lower ones, this is part of the explanation for Lila's status, but
this cross-level conflict is not the only mechanism by which static patterns
persit and are preserved. The cultural immune system, for example, protects
itself from alien patterns even though they are at the same level. Our
biological immune system keeps the bugs out too. Ideas may be rejected for
many reasons, some of them may even be damn good reasons. Ideas might
wrongly be rejected because they are beyond one's ability to percieve of
comprehend them, but then they can also be rejected because they just don't
add up.
Thanks.
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