[MD] Food for Thought

[ian glendinning]

Hi DMB, you suggested
"social quality is aimed at controlling biological quality
while intellect is aimed at controlling social quality"

Sounds promising - "aimed at controlling" is very close to the
"imposition" aspect I summarised from what Arlo had already said. Is
this your "principle of opposition" ?

Do you see this as wholly satisfactory in distinguishing  intellectual
from social ? Could you elaborate on this, or point to somewhere where
you believe you already have.

One objection I would see so far, is in the "means" of control. For
example, I wouldn't consider an intellectual aim to "control" the
social as intellectual if the means of control were physical force or
imposition, say. What have I missed ?

Ian

On 1/5/07, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Arlo said way back on Wed, 20 Dec 2006:
> It is clear that Pirsig considers some "thought patterns" social, as he
> includes the mythos in (or "as") the social level. And the mythos is NOT
> simply physical interactivity. So I don't think making the case that social
> patterns are physical and intellectual patterns are mental can be supported
> by LILA...
>
> dmb says:
> I suppose part of the confusion stems from the way each of the higher levels
> includes the lower ones. You know, all biological organism are also
> physical. All social creatures are also biological and physical. In the same
> way, intellectual patterns are also physical, biological and social. Not
> only do we have electricity flowing through brains as we use words,
> intellectual pattens can be carved in stone, printed on paper, spoken out
> loud and are otherwise manifest in physical reality.
>
> Arlo said:
> ...Pirsig ...criticizes intellect for being SOM. But in differentiating what
> makes a symbolic pattern "intellectual" or "social", it seems he paints
> himself into a corner where the ONLY distinctions offered are those he
> argues against.
>
> dmb says:
> I'm still baffled as to why nobody has yet entertained the central
> distinction, the one I repeatedly offered up. If there some reason to reject
> the notion that social quality is aimed at controlling biological quality
> while intellect is aimed at controlling social quality, then I would very
> much like to know what it is. So far, this point has mostly been ignored and
> it seems to me that it would clear things up quite a lot. Shaking hands, for
> example, seems to be aimed at controlling violence. Its a greeting that
> says, symbolically, I have no club or knife in my hand so don't be afraid.
> It sends all kinds of signals about violent intentions and the lack thereof.
> Don't you think? Later, as firmness of the grip and the confidence of eye
> contact determine the quality of the handshake, the violence inhibiting
> component becomes less conspicuous, but that's only a testiment to the
> effectiveness of the ritual, no?
>
> Arlo said:
> Why is "science" an intellectual pattern but "theology" a social pattern, if
> NOT for the very SOMist things (deculturizing and decontextualizing) the MOQ
> argues against? What I think is that Bodvar's SOLAQI has accurately
> describes what Pirsig "wrote", but I don't think its what he "meant".  I'm
> just unsure as how to resolve it.
>
> dmb says:
> I don't get you here. In what sense does the MOQ argue against deculturizing
> and decontextualizing? What do you mean by those terms? In what sense are
> these SOMist things? And I really don't understand how anyone can see SOLAQI
> as something that "accurately describes what Pirsig wrote". I mean, if the
> MOQ is a non-SOM intellectual description then the MOQ demonstrates that
> intellect is not equivalent to SOM. If the Eastern languages don't emphasize
> that distinction and their philosophies do not use it as an assumption, then
> we have a huge example of non-SOM intellect. As I understand it, SOM is just
> one of an infinite number of potential worldviews within the intellectual
> level. Yes, it dominates and characterizes the Western intellect, but hey,
> she's just a kid. She's just getting warmed up, just beginning to recognize
> its own independence. I mean, in terms of evolutionary history, the social
> level is a hundred times older than the intellect.
>
> And as far as theology goes, sure its intellectual. Any ism or ology would
> fit the bill. And so it is Hedonism. I think we have to make a distinction
> between form and content. The Hedonist makes an intellectual case for
> biological quality and the theologian makes an intellectual case for social
> level beliefs. I mean, we can even produce intellectual descriptions of
> inorganic reality but physics is intellectual even if its subject "matter"
> is not. Pun intended. I mean, there is a difference between WHAT we are
> talking about and HOW we are talking about it. It seems to me that all the
> levels below intellect can be scrutinized and examined intellectually, but
> they are still distinct from intellect.
>
> There is a piece of conventional wisdom floating around in our postmodern
> world that says, basically, everything is "read", everything is interpreted.
> Recently, when we were looking at Richard Rorty's "Texts and Lumps", the
> philosopher lecturing us pointed out that, according to Rorty, lumps ARE
> texts. He and his friends are fond of saying that reality is text "all the
> way down", that interpretation is bottomless. This point makes sense only in
> a very limited context, I think. The general effect of this slogan is to
> construe absolutely everything as "symbolic". In this view, there is no way
> to say one interpretaiton is any better than the other. Like Pirsig's MOQ,
> this is a rejection of objectivity, but oh what a difference there is
> between Pirsig and the Rortys of this world. Anyway, it seems to me that
> part of the problem around here with grasping the distinction between social
> and intellectual quality is that this is being asserted in a cultural
> context in which all such hierarchies and distinctions have been rejected.
> The discovery that human understanding and meaning is culturally constructed
> has been construed to mean that all human meaning and understanding is...
> well, meaningless and there is no such thing as "real" understanding. This
> is what leads Rorty to conclude that agreement among one's cultural peers is
> all we can ever have. There is no objectivity and so we can only have
> solidarity. There is no such thing as objectivity and so there is no such
> thing as truth. All we can have is agreement, a sort of consensus of our
> delusions. Anyway, I'm guessing that this sort of postmodernism and is very
> hard to square with Pirsig's view. I mean, maybe we have to notice that
> Pirsig disagrees with postmodernism in some ways, that Rorty and friends
> would disagree with Pirsig. Its worth pointing out, I suppose, that Rorty
> looked and James' Radical Empiricism and quickly rejected as worthless
> stuff. Not that this debate centers on Rorty, but he's the most famous
> representative of this view and I just spent some time contrasting his view
> with Dewey, James and Pirsig for a term paper.
>
> dmb
>
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