[MD] Food for Thought

[Heather Perella]

> [Arlo]
> One of the problems I've been having is this. Bear
> with me, again, I am
> "thinking out loud". (Part of this was from an email
> from earlier this
> morning).
> If we take the comment that the intellectual level
> involves "symbolic
> manipulations" what is left for the social? Human
> physical interactivity. 

     Yes, interactivity.  Once you conceptualize these
activities, then you've placed society, two or more
people (animals, plants, etc..., leave that for
another day), upon the intellectual level.  When I
shake hands with somebody, this is not a thought, but
it may be instigated by a thought.  This interactivity
is not describing biology, cells, etc... at all,
unless you want to go into detail as to what the hands
are made of.

     [Arlo]
> Now this presents a new problem. We must include
> only interactivity that rests
> on non-communicative, non-semiotic foundations,
> perhaps instinctual, as
> interactivity the relies on some form of
> communicative behavior (organizing
> roles, for example) must by definition use symbolic
> manipulations, even if they
> are physical, gestural, etc.

     Why does interactivity include thought in this
way?  When I shake somebody's hand, this is not
thought shaking hand, and not just biology shaking
hand, we've socialized.  Sure it takes thought to
carry this out, and biology is the foundation for such
action to occur, but I'm not seeing thought move
about.  I am seeing hands move about, but these hands
are involved in an action between thought stimulus and
biological foundation.  I wouldn't get caught up in
instinct, and hands are involved thus it must just be
biological, for it is just biology carrying this
action out, and thought stimulating it.


     [Arlo]
> And since Pirsig
> excludes non-human life from the
> social level, I'd have to ask what distinguishes
> these non-communicative,
> instinctual human social patterns from, say, herd
> behavior?

     The only difficulty, and disagreement I have
about this, is Pirsig only includes human life. 
Clearly birds at the seeds outside the window are
socializing.  They are involved together in
interactions where thoughts are not floating in the
air and biology is not just like a stick laying dead
on the ground.


     [Arlo]
> If some forms of symbolic manipulations occur on the
> social level, this would
> mean that intellectual patterns are a special form
> of symbolic manipulations,
> not simply symbolic manipulations.

     When I think of symbolic manipulations, I think
about ideas.  Culture is an interface between society
and intellect, but I'm not saying culture is stuck in
the middle of these two levels.  Intellect, while in
communication with society, will end up, for example,
making a spearhead.  This definitely took thought.  A
mental image outside of the rock itself.  Yet, this
imposition upon the rock is an extension of the mental
image.  This imposition upon the rock is called
culture.  It is artistic.  Art impressions upon a
canvas, rocks, etc... are intellectual, stimulate
intellect, but in this line of thinking I'm involved
with, the artwork, finished product, is still
intellectual.  Not being socialized, not being
biological.  Yet, you can socialize culture.  You can
show other people and teach them this intellectual
art, all art is intellectual.  How much this artwork
is shared between people is just culture being shared
and appreciated by others.  This is how society works.



     [Arlo]
> Using Pirsig's
> placement of intellect with
> the Greeks, then, it would seem that intellectual
> patterns are symbolic
> manipulations that result from an attempt to
> deculturize descriptive
> experience. 

     Not sure what this means, "...deculturize
descriptive experience."

     [Arlo]
> This would seem to be supported by Pirsig's
> suggestion that "Ancient Greeks such
> as Socrates and Pythagoras paved the way for the
> fundamental principle behind
> science: that truth stands independently of social
> opinion."

     Social opinion is just society appreciating and
sharing thoughts, rocks, anything.  Social opinion
would involve science, for scientists, people, decide
what they will study, what grabs their attention, and
if it seems to fit at the time, what they will use to
construct theories and use as supporting data.  For
over 100 years, scientists accepted Darwins
postulation that evolution always happens in a gradual
way.  Yet, the data didn't support this, but Darwin
just said, and everybody else did until Gould and
Eldridge, that the fossil record was incomplete.  This
social opinion does not escape scientists, for they
are a society.


     [Arlo]
> But one cannot deculturized descriptive experience,
> as Pirsig himself noted.
> "The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic
> process of freeing itself
> from its parent social level, namely the church, has
> tended to invent a myth of
> independence from the social level for its own
> benefit. Science and reason,
> this myth goes, come only from the objective world,
> never from the social
> world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the
> mind with no social
> mediation whatsoever." And, "Our scientific
> description of nature is always
> culturally derived."

     ok, I guess you're saying society does decide how
to look upon objects?

     [Arlo] 
> Perhaps a better word would be "decontextualize".
> That is, intellectual patterns
> are symbolic manipulations that result from an
> attempt to decontextualize
> descriptive experience. The trouble with this is,
> symbolic manipulations are by
> definition "decontextual" (the word "apple" is not
> an apple), so this leads to
> some redundancy.

     ok.

     [Arlo]
> Pirsig also says, "One can imagine primitive
> song-rituals and dance-rituals
> associated with certain cosmology stories, myths,
> which generated the first
> primitive religions. From these the first
> intellectual truths could have been
> derived. ... Their sequence in history suggests that
> principles emerge from
> ritual, not the other way around." Here he seems to
> set the mythos as the
> social level and the logos as the intellectual
> level.

     Ok, due noted the direction here of how intellect
comes about from rituals to intellect.  It happens the
other way around, too.  Pirsig states that a moral
intellect helps society.  Rituals, I see, stimulate
situations that are not seen, as religion,
spirituality, and even dynamic quality does.  This is
probably why Pirsig mentions dq as the godhead.


     [Arlo] 
> He makes this exact point when he says, "The logical
> order of things which the
> philosophers study is derived from the "mythos." The
> mythos is the social
> culture and the rhetoric which the culture must
> invent before philosophy
> becomes possible. Most of this old religious talk is
> nonsense, of course, but
> nonsense or not, it is the parent of our modern
> scientific talk. This "mythos
> over logos" thesis agreed with the Metaphysics of
> Quality's assertion that
> intellectual static patterns of quality are built up
> out of social static
> patterns of quality."

     The mythos is a shared activity.  I would say it
includes thought.  These people are thinking a G-d
exists.  Pirsig trying to come up with a special kind
of thought fogs this distinction.  I would include all
thought on the intellectual level, and then go from
there as to what kind of thinking is most helpful or
not with society.

     [Arlo] 
> But he moves away from this saying, "Elementary
> static distinctions between such
> entities as "before" and "after" and between "like"
> and "unlike" grow into
> enormously complex patterns of knowledge that are
> transmitted from generation
> to generation as the mythos, the culture in which we
> live." Here it is seems,
> as it is in ZMM, that the "mythos" as a "complex
> pattern of knowledge" suggests
> it is part of the intellectual level. Or, that the
> social and intellectual
> levels are both complex patterns of knowledge. Which
> brings us back to what
> differentiates them?

     Knowledge is intellectual.  Knowledge can be
shared in a society, and how society transfers this
knowledge will include the social level.  When I shake
somebody's hand, it means something that each person
may come away from this social behavior with a
thought.  This Pirsig jumping around has confused this
distinction.  He can't think of everything.  Pirsig is
not perfect.  Wouldn't it be up to us to clear up and
add on, for the MoQ is to be creative, anything that
would be necessary to include in the MoQ?


     [Arlo]
> Science? This would validate the supposition that
> "intellectual patterns" are
> those that strive for either deculturized or
> decontextualized descriptions of
> experience. But again, Pirsig argues against the
> idea that intellectual
> patterns can be deculturized (as do I), and
> decontextualized applies to the
> very nature of symbolic mediation.

     I'm not finding what I think about the
distinctions unclear and I also find them simple.  A
thought is intellectual.  That which is of the sphere
of the mind is intellectual, thus, consciousness,
awareness, ideas, concepts, etc...  It sounds like
Pirsig is not perfect and did not with great effort
try to clarify these distinctions.  He did say
everybody knows the intellect, and then just left it
at that.  Yet, he jumped around and muddied it all up.



evening colors edge the blue,
SA

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com