[MD] Food for Thought

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Dan quotes Pirsig's letter to Paul]
"Intellectuality occurs when these customs as well as biological and inorganic
patterns are designate with a sign that stands for them and these signs are
manipulated independently of the patterns they stand for."

[Arlo]
First, Dan, thanks for taking the trouble to post this. I do admit to ongoing
confusion about this distinction, and so don't take my comments as any sort of
statement, they are merely outloud musings.

To the above quote, the trouble is, "handshaking" is itself a "sign" that
"stands for" something else. Or consider this example, a "Don't Walk" sign on
your local streetcorner. This is a "sign" (in both senses) that "stands for" an
activity that is "manipulated independently" of the activity of the activity.
Does this mean that "Don't Walk" signs are "intellectual patterns"? What if the
sign actually said in words "Don't Walk", would that make it an intellectual
pattern? 

I think this distinction, then, is largely false. Much "social" activity is as
mediated by "signs" as intellectual activity. Again, it seems a difference in
"kind" not in "use". 

[The letter to Paul]
"Intellect" can then be defined very loosely as the level of independently
manipulable signs. Grammar, logic and mathematics can be described as the rules
of this sign manipulation." (Robert Pirsig)

[Arlo]
What language is NOT "independently manipulable signs"? When I say "I saw a
brown cow" I am manipulating symbols independently of the things they stand
for. Is that statement an "intellectual pattern"?

[Dan adds his own comments]
By isolating and examining the term "bless you" we are now acting
intellectually. ... Intellectually it seems socially better to mimic others
rather than to establish a particular style of handshake.

[Arlo]
Here it seems what I could say is that "intellectual patterns" are "signs about
signs", or the level of "examing signs themselves". That is, we make the "sign"
the object of scutiny rather than the "meaning" the sign was designed to
convey. Would that be a fair understanding of your words?

[Dan quotes Pirsig]
Thus, though it may be assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had
intellect, it can be doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture.

[Arlo]
That's quite a comment about the people who had the intellect to design and
built the Pyramids! I think I'd agree to a statement that they did not have "an
intellectually guided system of governance" (being that they were subservient
to religion), but to say their "culture" was not intellectual is somewhat
strange to me.

But here again I am pulled right back to Bodvar's SOLAQI. Pirsig is laying BOTH
the advent of S/O metaphysics AND the intellectual level at the feet of the
Greeks. Now tell me how they are not the same, considering their origins are
identical. Reason, logic, decontextualized and deculturized thought appear to
be BOTH the source of SOM AND the intellectual level.