[MD] The Greeks?

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Mary,

Mary said:
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.

Matt:
Stated as you have, I don't fall into a camp like that 
because of my insouciance about the Metaphysics of Quality 
as a systematic philosophy.  I generally talk about "Pirsig's 
philosophy" instead of "the MoQ" because I generally just 
like habits of thought and techniques when I do philosophy, 
not completed-looking machines like philosophical systems.  
I don't mean to be unduly eristical about it, but I'm wary 
about giving the wrong impressions.

But if we distinguish between "what Pirsig would say" from 
"what Pirsig should have said," a distinction between 
biography and philosophy, when I'm doing biography--when 
_anybody_ is doing biography--it isn't good policy to avoid 
what a person says because you don't like it.  Most people 
who write about Nazi Germany don't agree with what was 
done, but they try and get it right anyways.  So, Pirsig 
says "symbol manipulation," and perhaps he doesn't write 
a whole lot about it, but saying he "doesn't explain his 
reasoning" might be too strong a way of downplaying it.  I 
have no reason to be suspicious of its coherence with his 
philosophy because of what he did say about it (one reason 
why the historical narrative can be important to ferreting 
out its meaning, because of the dearth of exposition), and 
because of the way it integrates with most of the rest of 
what he said in Lila and Lila's Child.  But, on the other hand, 
I haven't read deeply into Pirsig's material in a long while (I 
haven't even seen the DVD), and am not currently 
concerned with writing biography about Pirsig, so I don't 
have a lot at stake in being right about that right now.  But 
I'll grant you, Pirsig's raised my hairs a few times.

Mary said:
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.

Matt:
Heh.  You sound like I did years ago when more concerned 
about Pirsig's levels. (Though I would avoid "one person 
should be able to explain..."  _Should_ someone be able to?  
How many people write here?  Does lack of cleverness or 
concern by those few tremulous souls who are here make 
one's own point?)  I'm not the dancing partner for you on 
this topic, but I used to rail on getting more clarification 
about where language fits in Pirsig's schematic, and how 
fitting it causes turbulence in the system once you realize 
how social it is (though I think Krimel's allusion to Pirsig's 
computer analogy is the right place to start).

I'm not saying being systematic about it can't be done (I 
have my own ways of being systematic, but the first thing 
I do is not think about levels), but "what purpose of its 
own" is a nice challenge.  However, I'm not sure it would 
be directed towards "symbol manipulation," but rather the 
level as a whole--what is symbol manipulation the 
mechanism for?  Because if, say, "cellular replication" is 
the mechanism of the biological level, it doesn't make 
sense to wonder what its purpose is for--its replication.  
Purpose, I think, can only be determined at a higher level 
(which Pirsig implies, I think, in his reinterpretation of 
Darwin in Lila).

If I remember correctly, we talked about the levels in 
January.  And I wasn't very stimulating then, either.  The 
trouble I have, as I think I said then, is that once you start 
tinkering, the more I want to just wipe the slate and begin 
a different way.  But here's the last account I still find 
interesting enough to keep pasting into posts when people 
challenge me about levels:

Inorganic level - non-replicating persistence (e.g., rocks)
Biological level - replicating persistence (e.g., cells)
Social level - non-linguistic semiotic behavior (e.g., tigers)
Intellectual level - linguistic semiotic behavior (e.g., humans)

And a fifth level for good measure:

Eudaimonic level - autonomous behavior (e.g., citizens of democracies)

You'll notice that since I call the social level "semiotic," I've 
dropped "symbolic" down into the social.  You'll also notice 
I've (successfully?) avoided mentioning subjects or objects.  
Or the ability of differentiation, for that matter now that I 
look at it.  If I thought hard enough about it, I think I could 
probably come up with a purpose for all of the levels, but I 
can only think of an interesting one for the fourth and fifth: 
"production of true sentences" and "happiness" respectively.  
And when you take in what I said about purpose above, 
that means we didn't know what the production of true 
sentences was for until relatively recently, probably not 
even in Greece at the time.  It's only in the last 200 or so 
years that we've figured out that we've been producing all 
these true sentences all these years to produce democracy 
(I think that was John Stuart Mill's answer).  And what is 
happiness for?  I believe that is what I would refer to as a 
"bad question."

Matt
 		 	   		  
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