[MD] Intellectual and Social

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt,

> Steve said:
> I'm not sure that it makes sense to say that the train of
> thought needs social patterns to intercede. Intellectual
> patterns are social through and through by the "mythos
> over logos" argument.
>
> Matt:
> Heh, well, I think pretty much everybody misunderstood
> what I was saying here.  I wasn't saying, as I think Mary
> said and everybody jumped on board in thinking that's
> what I was saying, that social patterns control intellectual
> patterns--I was trying to identify a way of thinking about
> how they interact.  The question is: since inferential
> thinking can continue on indefinitely, how is it that we
> stop?  Habits of satisfaction, conclusions to problems we
> are pleased with, was my answer--these habits take on
> something we could call "authority."
>
> Since the patterns at different levels _must_ interact,
> people do need an answer to that question.  They do
> need to specify how the levels interact.
...
>
> In the set-up I offered, I was suggesting how the
> intellectual interacts with the social, and then the social
> with the biological level, to thus produce action from a
> thought (remembering Pirsig's claim that you can't leap
> levels).


Steve:
I think I understand better what you are getting at, and I like the
"authority" idea. I have read others to be taking intellectual
patterns that become a part of the dominant worldview to have actually
become social patterns and to have ceased to e intellectual patterns,
while in fact ALL intellectual patterns are social. I think a better
reading of Pirsig's MOQ is to think of such intellectual patterns that
become widely accepted as having gained a certain sort of social
quality that other ideas may not have, and I think a good "quality
word" in this case is indeed "authority."

As I understand and agree with you, authority may be a good word to
describe the interaction between the social and intellectual level
since it is a social pattern that applies to socially well-accepted
justifications (intellectual patterns) as well as to social
role-playing patterns. Intellectual patterns that get translated into
action must have the social value pattern of authority.

Have you given any thought to terms describing the interaction between
the other levels? I had some ideas yesterday, but can't remember them
this morning.

Another perhaps more Pirsigian and certainly simpler answer to your
question--"since inferential thinking can continue on indefinitely,
how is it that we stop?"-- is simply that that some arguments get
selected over others and acted upon based on undefined quality. I
think this is what he was getting at with the talk about how the
number of hypotheses to explain a given result keeps expanding. How do
we generate new ones, where do they come from, and how do we select
from among all the possibilities to decide which ones to test? I think
his answer was simply undefined quality. He was pointing out that the
socially independent ahistorical faculty of Reason that the logical
positivists posited could not actually function without some
extra-added ingredient. In the more fleshed out version of Pirsig's
philosphy in Lila, perhaps we can now see that there are two aspects
to this extra ingredient: the dynamic aspect to answer the question
"where do these hypotheses keep coming from?" and the static aspect ot
anser the question "which of these hypotheses get acted upon and which
ones don't?" I think "authority" is an excellent term to describe this
static aspect and the interaction between the social and intellectual
levels.

Did I get you right this time?

Best,
Steve