Mfer's
ram asked
> 3WD - to further clarify your definition:
> How does the intellectuall level promote those patterns in a way different
> from the patterns promoted by the social level?
3WD
As I said before, " it is very difficult, if not impossible, to clearly separate where the
intellectual construct of a pattern leaves off and the [social, biological or inorganic] pattern
itself begins. In a thread last March
we discussed a response by Pirsig to a question about intellectual patterns by Ant McWatt that at
first glance resembles a "dog chasing it tail."
> >Anyway,
> >here's Pirsig:
> >"The section in chapter 3 (in ZMM) about gravity points out
> >that the body of knowledge we call science is in fact
> >subjective. The law of gravity exists only in the minds of
> >modern-day people, who can change this law any time new
> >information shows that a higher quality law of gravity can
> >be constructed.....both the "law of gravity" and "gravity" are
> >intellectual static patterns, but gravity (when you take
> >the quotation marks off) is said, in a very high quality
> >interpretation of experience, to be an external reality."
> >Among these patterns is the intellectual pattern that says
> >"there is an external world of things out there which are
> >independent of intellectual patterns".
> >That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns
> >there is. And in this highest quality intellectual
> >pattern, external objects appear historically before
> >intellectual patterns...But this highest quality intellectual pattern itself comes
> >before the external world, not after, as is commonly presumed by the materialists..
> (Correspondence from Pirsig to McWatt)
But after you read and reread this you finally come to the conclusion that until there is an
intellect there are no patterns of value, and no need of them. All is just experience as Cory aptly
put this way:
Cory
> There are no levels here in the valley. There are no static patterns of
> value and there is no Dynamic Quality to be found no matter how one might
> look. Everything just is. Simply is.
3WD
So when people assert that language as a social level pattern , is the " machine code" which enabled
the intellectual level to emerge I am not so sure. If "one of the highest quality intellectual
patterns" is that "there is an external world of things out which are independent of [my or your]
intellectual patterns", it just may well be that way back when the urge to communicate this concept
of reality to another was the event that enabled the birth of post-grunt language. Maybe even the
grunt ones! Now if you wish to say that development of languages ,in the broadest sense including
all forms of sense communication, enables the intellectual level to become dominant, I would agree.
A platypus to make the point. Helen Keller. Did she have an intellect prior to her learning a
language? Take a look at Mark Butler's excellent post on Bloom's "names for intellectual skill
patterns" and ask if she was devoid of all of items in the first six catagories until she had a
language. I don't think so.
But back to your question " How does the intellectuall level promote those patterns in a way different
from the patterns promoted by the social level?" It doesn't, it uses the lower levels to record
and promote its patterns. Newton's "law of gravity" was originally an idea of one individual, an
individual intellectual pattern of thought, a lone apple on the head, Eureka! But the instant that
Newton put quill and ink to paper to write the idea down all the other levels came into play. What
is a quill? What's paper? What's writing? They all once were ideas, individual intellectual patterns
of value,which then manipulated the lower levels in some way to achieve the desired end. Extending
this even further Newton's idea, that seemingly lone individual intellectual pattern, was both
supported and shaped by the lower level patterns of value that were Newton. And Newton's society
devolving back, if you wish, to a cosmic butterfly fart.
3WD
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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