[MD] The Greeks?

[Mary]

Hi Matt,

> Hi Mary,
> 
> Mary said:
> You play your cards close to the vest, but me?  Ask me
> anything.
> 
> Matt:
> I've tried to get in the habit of trying not to say everything
> at once all the time.  It usually isn't effective writing, and
> just stirs more hornets nests than anything else.  But as I
> would hope, one could likewise ask me anything (though I
> can't always promise an interesting answer).


[Mary Replies] 

Appreciate the links and will look at them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that you are in the DMB, et al,
camp where the Intellectual Level is defined as symbol manipulation.  The
more I think about it the further I get from that camp.  The distance
increases daily and this honestly puzzles me.  It puzzles me because I'm not
in the least playing the contrarian for the sake of it.  I would be
perfectly content to view the Intellectual Level as a cuba libre if that
were intellectually satisfying, and when others are asked to explain their
reasoning, it tends to devolve into frustrated declarations that it should
be obvious, or that Pirsig said it in an interview, or even the occasional
insult.  None of these things are intellectually satisfying - particularly
the appeal to later quotes of Pirsig.  Yes, he did say that, but he did not
explain his reasoning.  This is not at all to be inferred as disrespectful,
but let's face it, Pirsig said the occasional hair-raising thing on the
recent DVD that I'm sure he would retract had he noticed at the time.  The
question, though, is if so many firmly believe IPOVs are 'symbol
manipulation', then at least one person should be able to explain how that
makes the Intellectual Level differ from the Social.  What 'purpose of its
own' does symbol manipulation serve?  That, at least, is where I would like
to start.

Best,
Mary

> 
> Mary said:
> Pirsig, for instance, makes a pretty impressive case that
> IPOVs really needed Socrates to grind that good 'ole
> Dharma/DQ of the Iliad into proper 'form'.
> 
> Matt:
> Maybe.  That's too vague a statement for me to be able to
> agree to or not.  (Particularly if there's still a lingering
> question of what, exactly, constitutes an intellectual pattern,
> a smell I still sense in the air.)  For example, I thought you
> had just got done saying that we don't need to know
> anything about Greek culture to understand the MoQ, but I
> have to imagine you need to know something to get the gist
> of why that claim would be true.  And what's more, the more
> one reads about Greek culture, the more one would be
> inclined to tread carefully with lending agreement (e.g., the
> notion that the arete of the Iliad is solely the warrior's).
> 
> Mary said:
> I've never cared much for the emotional appeal, as in Ch. 29
> of ZMM.  But he just sounds harmlessly excited with the
> discovery of a new idea.
> 
> Matt:
> What is the appeal are you referring to?  There is a lot of
> excitement in that chapter, but there are so many
> important formulations laid out in that chapter, I'd hate for
> you to be referring to one of the ones I like.
> 
> Matt said:
> For example, if one were so inclined to say "the Intellectual
> Level had its first defender in Socrates, and codifier in Plato,"
> then you'd have an interestingly controversial set of old
> antagonisms to think through...
> 
> Mary said:
> Yeah, well that's why I asked the question.
> 
> Matt:
> Really?  I took you at cross purposes, then.  Because these
> two questions, "Does it matter to the MoQ whether the
> Intellectual Level existed before or after Socrates?  Is there
> some critical point of order I'm missing?" seemed rhetorical,
> with the implication--I took it--that you _didn't_ think the
> Socrates question was important to understanding the MoQ,
> especially when you closed with, "The argument doesn't
> seem to have anything to do with the value of the MoQ itself."
> 
> It sounded to me like I needed to defend the idea that the
> historical narrative has some importance to the interpretation
> of the philosophy.  Which was the limited, tight-to-the-vest
> point I was aiming at suggesting.
> 
> Matt said:
> Identifying the intellectual level with Socrates is often an
> old philosopher's trick to get other people to think that
> what they do (as footnotes to Plato) _is_ (rather than
> _was_) a culturally momentous task.
> 
> Mary said:
> that's an interesting statement you make there.  I'll see
> your statement and raise you one.  As far as I know, no
> one but Pirsig has ever mentioned an "Intellectual Level"
> in their work.
> 
> Matt:
> I'm not sure how seriously you mean for me to take that.
> Taking it on it's face would be like taking Natalie Portman's
> character at full seriousness in Garden State when she
> performs her feat of utter uniqueness--"This is your one
> opportunity to do something that no one has ever done
> 
> before and that no one will copy throughout human
> existence."  It's funny because of how silly that one thing
> she does that no one will ever copy (would one want to?)
> and because, when push comes to shove, the idea is
> predicated on spatialtemporal uniqueness (meaning every
> moment in our lives is unique).  Pirsig, at the beginning of
> ZMM, was echoing T. S. Eliot's famous declamation in
> "Tradition and the Individual Talent" that the pursuit of the
> New for the sake of Newness was a sad dereliction of the
> Great, creating as Pirsig says, "an endless parade of trivia
> and fashion, the silt of tomorrow." (Ch. 1)
> 
> I'm not even sure Pirsig was the first to ever cobble
> together the word "intellectual" next to the word "level" in
> a sentence--I wouldn't even want to take that bet--but
> even if he were, why should I care that he was the first to
> use some particular idiosyncratic vocable?  The only reason
> I should care is if we've previously established its conceptual
> power.  And as it sounded like you only cared about the
> power and not the uniqueness, the statement seems a little
> besides the point.  And, it doesn't appear to have a direct
> relation to what I said about the philosopher's proclivity for
> self-aggrandizement.
> 
> Mary said:
> SOL is an old term around here that to my amazement I'm
> finding few to remember the original meaning of.  Basically,
> anything that has an ego.  My dog, for instance.  So easy
> to hurt her feelings or delight her.  But yes, the basic ability
> to care about the difference between self and not-self.
> 
> Not at all the same thing as SOM.
> 
> You ready to show me some cards?
> 
> Matt:
> Okay, how about this: I still don't find the acronym "SOL" a
> useful label for the ability of an organism to tell the difference
> between itself and the "not Me," as Emerson put it (which
> may have something to do with why no one remembers its
> "original meaning"--people don't find it useful enough to
> bother remembering).  But you're right: the power of
> discrimination is not inherently a metaphysics (nor is anything
> else inherently a metaphysics, or metaphysical--not even the
> appeareance/reality distinction, or between mind/matter).
> 
> Aside from that, I'm not sure what cards you want to see.
> To risk the grand pronoucements John kindly thinks I avoid
> (I guarantee if you type "I've already said this repeatedly"
> into moq.org's search engine, you'll come up with more
> than a few of my own entries), if you think I'm too
> close-fisted in conversation, you can always puruse the
> few writings I have on Pirsig on my website, and related
> material like "The Metaphysics Series" (that never made it
> past two).  There's no lack of cards there if you wanted to
> see them.  Or the few essays I've written for moq.org.  I
> have recently written retrospective intros to those essays
> on my site:
> 
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/p/moqorg-essays.html
> 
> Or my two short intros to Pirsig:
> 
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/05/introduction-to-
> pirsig.html
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2009/07/short-pirsig-
> presentation.html
> 
> Or I have snippets of bits at the top of my rightnav bar,
> like this one called "Ass-Pennies and Humanity's Taint":
> 
> -----
> The ultimate parody of the struggle between the Sophists
> and
> Platonists, between not knowing what to teach and
> teaching something,
> comes to us in the form of an Upright
> Citizens Brigade sketch. The
> younger brother asks his older,
> successful brother for advice for an
> upcoming interview,
> whether he has a secret weapon. The older, wiser
> brother
> makes him promise not to tell anybody and, noting that it is
> 
> kind of a long-term strategy, asks him how much time he has.
> The
> younger brother says he has only a week, and the older
> brother says
> that it still might work. His secret wisdom, the
> secret to all of his
> success, the strategy he has employed?
> "Every time a penny passes
> through your hands, stick it up
> your ass. And then spend it." ... "That's a lot of ass-pennies
> I've got out there, my friend. And here's
> where the magic
> comes in: when I meet someone who intimidates me, who
> 
> puts me on edge, a real 'hard ass,' I just think to myself,
> 'they've
> probably handled one of my ass-pennies.' In fact,
> they probably got one
> in their pocket right then. That just
> seems to sort of give me the upper-hand. I mean, hey, I
> haven't touched anything that's been in
> their ass."
> 
> And that is what has happened to political
> philosophy. Plato
> made wisdom ineffable, which means the secret of life
> could
> be, according to the philosophers, sticking pennies in your
> ass.
> Nothing is closer to the heart of the human experiment
> than our negotiations with each other over how we are to
> function together--but
> is that the essence of humanity?
> "Go ahead, defend that thesis. I will
> destroy it," says the
> ghost of Socrates. Plato thought the wisdom of
> Socrates
> was the idea of an ineffable object of supremacy that was
> pure
> and holy and so extraordinarily not human, totally free
> of humanity's
> taint. What we should come to acknowledge
> as the wisdom of Socrates, however, is not the
> inhumanness of abstraction, but the total inanity
> of looking
> for abstract essences that somehow control particular,
> 
> specific human activities. No general definition of arete is
> going to tell us how to teach it as a general techne. Though
> the Sophists thought of themselves as teaching a general
> skill
> called "success," careers spent in service to wisdom,
> what they were
> actually doing was something more specific,
> teaching Athenians how to
> survive in the Greek city-state
> environment.
> -----
> 
> from "What Happened to Political Philosophy?", a post with
> a little bit about arete in it.
> 
> http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-happened-to-
> political-philosophy.html
> 
> Matt
> 
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