[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[skutvik at online.no]

Matt and Spiritual SA

On 13 Nov. Matt wrote:

> Matt said:
> That's why I don't go for the distinction between intelligence and
> intellect as what divides Pirsig's levels.  Intelligence is obviously
> the biologically linked thing that we share with the animals, 

This I actually agree with. At some point in the biological 
evolution the neural node called brain enabled animals to store 
former experience in a Read/Write Memory from where it can be 
retrieved and change future behavior. OK I won't go in details 
here.

> but I think that's all there is.  

Yes, that's all there is - at the biological level. Even if the brain 
grew to primate and hominid size it was no more than an ever 
increasing ability to survive. But as the social level established 
itself on top of biology the said "intelligence" became a social 
asset (all upper levels exploits the lower levels) but still 
something totally different from intellect (the level).  

> "Intellect" is a reification of a set of cultural innovations that
> humans were able to create in part through their creation of language. 
> Language was just a tool we created to help us survive. 

IMO language is the ultimate social pattern. I don't regard - for 
ex. - wolf packs to be social, yet there may have been pre-
language human (Neandertals, Cro Magnons) societies when 
only facial expressions and body gestures conveyed emotions, 
but these could not be "broadcasted", only with language did the 
social reality take off. But even if the individual knew self from 
other, had language and the grammatical subject/object 
distinction,  this was not INTELLECT in a MOQ sense, only 
"social intelligence".  

> So were all the other innovations that language made possible.  Some of
> these innovations took on a life of their own, but how do we tell an
> evolutionary story about the creation of "intellect" if it isn't a set
> of cultural innovations?  We haven't been able to do it for "mind" or
> "representations" yet, and that's partly why philosophers of a
> pragmatist stripe have been working so hard to retire them.

I'm not sure what you say here, but it's plain that - in a MOQ 
context - the intellectual level emerged the way SOM is 
presented in ZAMM by applying biological-turned-social-turned 
intellectual intelligence for its own purpose. Fist as a rebellion 
against the old mythologies (social values) in the form of a 
search for eternal principles, that ended with the notion of an 
objective TRUTH independent of subjective OPINION, i.e. the 
skeptical, scientific attitude was born. Later the subjective side 
(the equally obvious argument that everything takes place inside 
the subject mind, i.e. that all is "opinion") emerged, but this is 
intellectual's eternal see-saw.             
 
> Matt:
> Your point, however, is not my point.  We _can_ define intellect, and
> all the other levels, and we _should_ define intellect, and all the
> other levels.  

Agreement!

Bo