[MD] Food for Thought

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

Hi DMB,

You make some points I do want to return to. First, however, let me clarify that
most of this was just "thinking outloud", and was never intended to articulate
a position. That said, let me answer this.

[Arlo previously]
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]
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".

[Arlo]
In attempting to get at the distinction between symbolic activity on the social
and intellectual levels, it seems that "science", or "reason", is the primary
differentiation between intellectual patterns and social patterns. "There are
only old traditional social and religious meanings and these don't have any
real intellectual base. They're just traditions."

Pirsig goes on to describe the intellectual level as "logos", and the social
level as "mythos". In ZMM, he says this about the logos. "The term logos, the
root word of "logic," refers to the sum total of our rational understanding of
the world."

Now, my understanding of "reason" (or "logic" or "science") was precisely that
what "set it apart" was that it presented itself as "decultural" (meaning what
it professes is not culturally bound, but an "acultural", objective, to use
that word, description) and "decontextual" (meaning, for example, that the law
of gravity, an intellectual pattern, is not bound by context, but is
generalizable beyond specific contexts). These two things, I'd argue,
"decultural" and "decontextual", are the hallmarks of science.

But it is now clear to me that this, although an apt description of OUR
intellectual level, is not an inherent feature of intellect per se. The
problem, then, I encountered is specifically this. OUR intellectual level, OUR
logos IS SOMist. That was the message of ZMM. Reason, science, logic, the
specific things that DO differentiate intellectual from social symbolic
activity are the things that, because of our culture, do adhere to SOMist
views. 

"The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to
interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects and
objects is built right into these glasses." (LILA)

The same sentiment is expressed in ZMM. "Thus, in cultures whose ancestry
includes ancient Greece, one invariably finds a strong subject-object
differentiation because the grammar of the old Greek mythos presumed a sharp
natural division of subjects and predicates. In cultures such as the Chinese,
where subject-predicate relationships are not rigidly defined by grammar, one
finds a corresponding absence of rigid subject-object philosophy."

In LILA, Pirsig refutes this very "decultural"/"decontextual" view of intellect,
reminding us "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally
derived." He goes on, "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.It is easy to see the historic
reasons for this myth of independence. Science might never have survived
without it. But a close examination shows it isn't so." (I'll get to the
"decontextual" in a post referring to SA's question of "embodiement" in
"experience", and some things David Granger has said of Pirsig and Dewey).

Hope this clarifies some things. More soon.