[MD] Food for Thought

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to dmb:
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."  ...Hope 
this clarifies some things. More soon.

dmb says:
Yea, your post helped some. There seems to be an apples and oranges problem 
here, however. I mean, granted; SOM gives us objectivity with its notion of 
the independence of the rational mind. Despite the fact that we can see 
Pirsig denying this myth of independence, the MOQ still makes a distinction 
between the social and intellectual levels and says they are discrete. As I 
picture it in my mind, I see the social level as the missing link between 
mind and matter. One of the big problems generated by SOM is the mind/body 
problem and the notion of objectivity comes from this view, as Pirsig puts 
it, that the "objective world" is percieved by the intellect without 
anything in between. In the SOM view, the social level doesn't really exist 
so that things like traditional beliefs, myths and religions are just 
primitive, embryonic science. The mythos is just what we call intellect when 
its immature or something. I think Pirsig is saying that the mind body 
problem can be dismissed by adding this middle layer between mind and 
matter, between thoughts and things. As in the case of IndoEuropean grammar, 
our intellectual assumptions are shaped by the social level. The social 
level is the parent of intellect, the reality out of which it grew in the 
same way that biological reality is the parent of the social level, gave it 
shape and constitutes the reality out of which the social level emerged. I 
mean, Pirsig is giving us a different picture of intellect and its 
evolutionary relationship with those other layers of reality. I mean, he can 
deny the myth of independence and still assert the distinctions between 
levels. In fact, the myth of independence fails, in part, because it fails 
to draw a line between them properly. The lack of distinctions even extend 
to mind and body now so that intellect is just something like brain 
activity. I think the failure to draw such lines leads to tons of confusion 
and that the MOQ draws them in an effort to clear things up.

I think its interesting that the notion of a hierarchical structure of 
reality is the other key aspect of the perennial philosophy. Every culture 
has some version of it. Huston Smith and Ken Wilber both emphasize this 
feature and point out that hierarchies are a bit of a taboo these days in 
academia. Maybe this idea of levels is very unfashionable, but I'd bet that 
Pirsig doesn't mind.

Later,
dmb

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