Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sat, 13 Sep 1997 10:08:10 +0100
For Hugo!
You have more experience with Mailing Lists than I, and what you say sounds
very useful to bear in mind. Perhaps slow down the exchange rate a bit too.
About the Peirce/Pirsig connection: I think there have been qualitylike
efforts for a long time now. Could you give us a synopsis of how you see
the P/P relationship? I know positively that Pirsig does/did not know
Peirce, but ideas are contagious. I am also in touch with one who sees his
philosopher, Clement Jedrzejewski, as a pioneer.
For Magnus!
1. NO NO I don't regard you as a PITA. Not the least. You are a positive
challenge. I also agree to omitting "In my opinion" in each sentence.
Re. our ongoing organism-as-society issue. I dont want to gloss over it as
something that Pirsig has overlooked or forgotten. You wish to explain the
Intellectual level's emergence from a kind of society, because you don't
see how the macro society can produce mind. That's fair enough.
2. This - in turn - springs from the crucial difference how MIND is viewed
in a MOQ and a SOM context. After much pondering I have come up with the
following example to demonstrate this: Earlier this century there was found
a boy in India (I believe) who had been kidnapped by wolves as a baby and
raised by them. He had not developed an intellectual mind; no abstract
language, but a wolf's mind/conduct. He had the very same brain cell
"society" along with Jason's Einstein-Bose condensate, but was still lost
as an "intellectual". This may sound detrimental to mankind's vision of
itself as the biblical demigod halfway between heaven and earth - aware of
reality, but it is not.
3. Then you formulate a question: "How can language - and now I mean
conventional language used to communicate thoughts, needs or warnings be
invented without intellect? Here your intellect-as-consciousness surfaces
again. Symbolic abstract language IS the Intellect! It is an intellectual
activity to convey ideas/thoughts. Needs and warnings may be conveyed much
more effectively by other signals by ALL animals. OK, there might be held a
conference on the needs of the hungry or on the threatening global
pollution, but that takes place in the intellectual realm. Diana answered
the "invention" bit so well that it needn't be repeated.
4. Your summaries about our respective views and the dilemmas they face
were well formulated. You even formulated your own view's problems very
fairly.
5. Also congratulations on the Zuńi Indian example. But the dilemma for (my
view of) the MOQ I fail to see. It proves it: Being banned from one's
society is a harrowing experience, and may cause the individual to LOOSE
ITS MIND (going mad if you still live in a human society, turning into a
wolf if you live among wolves). That proves the point. The reason that the
Brujo survived was that he was so firmly anchored to an intellectual vision
(ideas are the most powerful means ever brought to bear) that the loss of
tribal contact did not affect him. He saw himself belonging to his people
in such a deep sense that the priests couldn't shake his social value
foundations. Those who aren't visionaries are more vulnerable to rejection
- we all are more or less. However no particular social relationship we
live in is the (objective) social value dimension of the MOQ.
5. Principally the MOQ's static Intellectual 'dimension' has nothing to do
with smartness, intelligence or ability to think. There are calculating
prodigies who can come up with the most amazing results in seconds, so
their "thinking" is not the least affected even if they are intellectual
AND SOCIAL nitwits. Also, consider the immense neural calculation (organic
value/mind) taking place for us to be alive (do you know Tor Nörretranders'
"Mćrk Verden"?).
Bodvar.
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