Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 10 Sep 1997 09:27:35 +0100
Re Diana's entry of Sep. 9
(A suggestion: Isn't it an idea to write like Diana with ordered
paragraphs. Everyone HAS already read the previous letter.). At times, I
have a hard time sorting out what is quotation and what is
commentary/opinion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(my numbers refer to your paragraphs from top)
No 1: Yes that is exactly the way language/intellect developed, namely
as a
survival tool for society. This is in fact an important part of Pirsig's
idea, he says so in LILA: (on top of page 306 Bantam Press, Bound):
" The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an
ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger and defeat
enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it
invents for this purpose." All value patterns started their "career" in
the
service of the parent level, but gradually they took off on their own
and
became a new value dimension. I don't think that humans - even humanoids
-
ever have been below the social level threshold, even apes live in
societies with strict rules and hierachial structures.
No 2: Also fully in accordance with the Quality idea as I interpret it.
Language is the birth of Intellect, but thousands upon thousands of
years
went by with human beings capable of speech, but still "submerged" in
social values. Also Diana, you sensed the extremely important effect
that
language had on creating the subject/object division: in a way
subject/object-metaphysics itself can be over-viewed as the first
Intellectual manifestation! ...."Pursuit of rationality! Just great!
Objectivity, truth was the first SOM-as-Intellect breakout.
No 3: Yes, "in the brain" just as a novel can reside in magnetic
orientations, print or in your memory... anything, but it is not the
inorganic medium; the words are static intellectual patterns.
No 4: The same goes here. You are correct about the brain. It consists
of
layers upon layers: deep down we have a reptilian brain from that period
of
evolution, then a limbic brain common to all mammals, and so on upwards
until the special human neocortex and frontal lobes. Of course the
Intellectual patterns have a home in the organic body in the sense that
every level builds upon the next lower which builds upon....etc, in that
capacity ALL levels have a home in MATTER, Society and Intellect have a
home in Biology, but Intellect (of the MOQ!!!!!) does NOT emerge from
organic body directly; it grows from Society. Sorry for hammering so
strongly on this point, but I have a feeling that when (Magnus!) the
term
"organic body" is used here, it is really its Inorganic (matter) aspect
that creeps in. And if the SOM's "consciousness produced by brain"
notion
enters it messes up the MOQ completely. We are not in disagreement, as I
see from the previous you have written; Brain is a prerequisite for
Intellect even in an MOQ context, but like a Jesuit I am out to exorcize
every vestige of the Subject/Object consciousness-out-of-matter idea
(which
leads into the age-old blind alleys of: Everything is matter or
everything
is mind). The neural system had to reach a certain complexity for the
Dynamic forces to use it as a vehicle for the Intellectual development
(just as matter had to have a volatile element like carbon for the
forces
to use as a vehicle of life), but -again - brain is biology and matter
while Intellect is all levels. The brain (E B Condensate, Penrose
'tubulae'
or whatever) as "producer of consciousnessor" is foreign to the MOQ.
No 5: Except for the "problem" part which I did not quite get (my
stupidity, but please elaborate), I could not have said it better.
Bodvar
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:lilasquad@geocities.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:41:55 CEST