[MD] What Bo Doesn't Get

[Krimel]

[John]
And I mean that in a good way Krimel.  Rarely have I encountered a post
where every single point made seems exactly right to me.

[Krimel]
Thanks, John.

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:

> > [Krimel]
> > Right, everything you can think of and everything anyone has ever 
> > thought of are potentially part of the intellectual level. To actually 
> > be part of the intellectual level as such, it must be a pattern. That is

> > it must persist or have extension in the temporal dimension.
>
> [Mati:]
> I think of the early primitive art in which animals were drawn
> on the cave wall, from my perspective they certainly were thinking
> about the animals and were conveying them in a temporal interpretation
> of the animals themselves. Based on what you suggest they must have
> been intellectual.  I would suggest they were displaying behavior that
> had an intelligence, but they were not intellectual.  Intellect
> requires a metaphysical basis.  That basis did not exist in a capacity
> to sustain itself as a level until Aristotle's S/O divide. I think
> there is a common agreement that intelligence existed long before
> intellect.
>
> [Krimel]
> I think the intellectual level was around way before cave art, which dates
> to about 40,000 years ago. But cave art and burial of the dead are among
> the
> first bits of evidence we have of an intellectual "level". They suggest
not
> just that thoughts occurred but that they persisted in time and were
shared
> within a community.
>
> Intellect does not require metaphysics. You have this backassward.
> Metaphysics is a product of intellect. As for the intellectual level its
> very existence as a level is supported entirely by the processes of
> encoding
> and decoding. Language is the first layer of the intellectual level that
> provides the extension in time needed for ideas to be transmitted and to
> persist in time. Amongst tribal people this meant that the intellectual
> level was at first confined to those who shared the language, values and
> traditions of small communities. As one group or another becomes more
> wide-ranging or families of common languages grew large so to did the
> intellectual level in the form of stories told around camp fires and the
> transmission of lore and skills to the young. Writing was the next step in
> the development of the intellectual level as it allows symbolically
encoded
> concepts to extend for centuries. Next came the printing press, then film
> of
> various sorts and now the digital revolution. All are phases in the
> explosion of the intellectual level in the modern world.
>
> Aristotle and the Greeks just happen to coincide with a period during
which
> writing had allowed for the accumulation of ideas to the point of critical
> mass. It was a marvelous time but it is not the beginning; it is merely a
> particular phase where in recognizably modern forms of thinking begin to
> appear.
>
> > [Krimel]
> > I don't think it is possible for intellect to precede society but if
that
> > were the case it would indeed be a problem for the MoQ. However, we see
> > that the social level is primary in almost all primates and most
mammals.
> > Intellect on the other hand only begins to show up in the great apes.
>
> Mati:
> I will respectfully suggest that your premise that thinking is
> intellect then indeed MoQ has a problem.  That has been the Achilles
> heal that Bo has been pointing out so persistently for so long.
>
> [Krimel]
> A proton is inorganic but it is not the inorganic level. CO2 is an organic
> molecule but it is not the organic level. A thought or even a method of
> thinking like logic may be intellectual but not the intellectual level. A
> level is the accumulation of all such patterns in one level or another.
The
> inorganic level consists of static pattern in the subatomic realm. The
> biological level is static patterns of carbon molecules and the
> intellectual
> level is symbolic encoding.
>
> > [Mati]
> > The point is when we discuss something that can defined metaphysically
> has
> > always come home to the S/O reality.
> >
> > [Krimel]
> > That does seem to be Bo's oft stated notion. It is so clearly wrong that
> > it is a wonder that anyone buys, much less repeats it.
>
> Mati:
> It is not clearly wrong from my humble perspective, based on
> what you believe is the metaphysical value of intellect. It seems that
> some other might have come to the same conclusion as Bo has suggested.
>  The problem is SOM has created a messy web which tangles our notion
> of who we are.  Bo's notions rids the tangles and puts intellect in
> it's proper place and allows MoQ to be the next possible level.
> Otherwise MoQ seems fail to gather any meaning with any legitimacy.
>
> [Krimel]
> As I said metaphysics is a form of intellectual activity. Metaphysics of
> any
> stripe is a part of the intellectual level. We can argue about the
relative
> merits of one metaphysics or another but this is hardly the basic for
> constructing a new level.
>
> [Mati:]
> I understand the need to suggest that MoQ is an intellectual
> pattern. And I agree that SOM and MOQ are two distinctive different
> patterns.  But if MoQ is a pattern of intellect of sorts it is
> completely separate entity from SOM(intellect).  I have privately
> discussed this issue at length with Bo. They function similarly in the
> same metaphysical discussion but MoQ is radically different from SOM
> in that provide a far more clearer understanding of all values that
> are defined.  Pirsig suggests, and I think correctly, that accounts
> for the meaning of all values, that was the shortcoming of SOM.  I
> know Bo will cringe at my suggestion that MoQ might be considered a
> Neo-Intellect, but that is an entirely different discussion.
>
> [Krimel]
> These are all fine reasons for preferring MoQ over SOM. But nothing in
what
> you say suggests that they are sufficiently different to constitute a
> different level. Giraffes are very different from elephant but both are
> vertebrates, both are mammals. Even the platypus however difficult it was
> to
> classify finds its way into a comfortable niche in the tree of life.
>
> {Mati:}
> Truth is based on the prospective that is based on. Walk into
> any church and ask were truth resides, they won't give you an answer
> that is neccessarily intellectually based.
>
> [Krimel]
> I might argue with the quality of the intellectual effort they put into
> their account of truth just as I am with you and Bo but that does not make
> their account any less intellectual. Their arguments are expressed
> symbolically and refer to patterns of thought and action. After all cancer
> is a biological pattern just as much as a bad idea is an intellectual
> pattern.
>
> > [Mati]
> > The metaphysical path of "encoding of experience into concepts" is a
> > dead end that gets nowhere metaphysically speaking in the same manner
> > as SOM.  Bo's simply points that out.
> >
> > [Krimel]
> > Saying it is a dead end does not make it so. This issue of encoding and
> > decoding experience into concepts is fundamental to perception and
> > discourse. It is what we are biologically and socially equipped to do
and
> > without it we have nothing to say no capacity to say it.
>
> Mati:
> Encoding and Decoding of experience is done at the biological,
> social and intellectual level.
>
> [Krimel]
> Such patterns as exist at the inorganic, biological and social levels can
> be
> encoded and decoded conceptually but nothing in those patterns is
> conceptual; they merely happen in response to the existing conditions.
When
> we detect such patterns and render them symbolic then they are at the
> intellectual level.
>
> [Mati:]
> The conceptualization is experience is done at both the social and
> intellectual level, and some might suggest it even happens at the
> biological level.  Again encoding and decoding of experience of
> concepts seems to be part of the capacity having intelligence not
> intellect, though it should be suggested that one needs a capacity
> of intelligence to allow intellect to function.
>
> [Krimel]
> A concept is a pattern of thinking that has extension in time. When we
> think
> about anything, we are operating at the intellectual level. But thinking
> and
> conceptualization are not required at either the social or the biological
> level. The Pecking Order is a social pattern that runs up and down the
> animal kingdom. Animals in a group organize their social behavior
according
> to each individual's rank in such hierarchies. They do not analytically
> describe their group dynamics, they just act. Primates are among the most
> social of animals and human patterns of social interaction do not differ
> significantly from what we see in other primate groups. Our species
> characteristically over thinks everything and we intellectualize and
> formalize certain forms and expressions of social behavior. But talking or
> understanding social behavior in intellectual terms does not make such
> talking and analysis any less a part of the intellectual rather than the
> social level.
>
> > [Krimel]
> > BTW, metaphysics, like physics, is mainly a matter of finding the
> smallest
> > set of concepts to account for the largest amount of experience. Static
> > and dynamic are two such concepts that account for a wider range of
> > phenomena than do subjects and objects or mind and matter.
>
> Mati:
> I find it interesting that of all the metaphysical phenomena
> that you had to chose from to contrast MOQ, you chose SOM to make your
> point.  Pirsig did the same thing. That is why, in part, I believe SOM
> defaults to Intellect.  There isn't any other metaphysical construct
> to default to in the same capacity, or any capacity for that matter,
> as the static value of intellect.
>
> [Krimel]
> Odd that you should say this because it has been my experience that when
> someone here throws out the "you talking SOM" line, it merely mean they
> either don't get what you have said or they don't like it. There is
nothing
> inherently SOM about physics. I suspect if you took a random sample of
> metaphysical leanings of a group of particle physicists you would get a
> pretty broad spectrum of opinions. After all Pirsig draws heavily on Bohr
> in
> his SPOV paper and it is exceedingly difficult to read Bohr as an advocate
> of SOM.
>
> That said, neither you nor Bo has ever presented, to my knowledge,
anything
> to suggest that the MoQ is not an intellectual pattern. Sadly the SOL
> (which
> I firmly believe is an apt nom de plume, since in my neck of the woods it
> means Shit Outta Luck) is little more than a lame attempt to elevate SOM
to
> the privileged position from which the MoQ seeks to dethrone it.
>
>
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