[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
Intellectual patterns are an attempt to codify, quantify and/or 
describe aspects of this transcendence. And the underlying social and 
cultural beliefs about this transcendence guide and structure our 
orientation to it.

[Ron]
True, and I'd add that an individual may arrive at this themselves 
and express this concept so that it may become a social and cultural 
belief which guides And structures our orientation to it.

[Arlo]
The responses in this thread have quickly overtaken my ability to 
respond to all points.

When you say "an individual may arrive at this themselves", I still 
see echoes of the lone-subject observing the objective-world, trying 
to overcome social distortions (not the old punk band) and see the 
world clearly. You may not think this, but this is (I believe) the 
heritage of the words you have chosen.

Rather than looking at the "individual" and the "collective" as not 
only disconnected, but antagonistic, entities, I prefer the 
dialogically entwined, and philosophically co-dependent, 
"individual-colllective". In this sense, no "individual" arrives at 
anything "themselves", in the sense of outside of, or irrespective 
of, the social-world they are intrinsically connected to. The MOQ, 
for example, is not a product of "Pirsig himself", but a point in a 
long dialogue echoing back to the Greeks (and from there, further 
still), and amassing a chorus of thoughts, words, beliefs and ideas. 
Socially, we are accustomed to ascribing "proprietary" ownership of 
an idea to "one person" rather than see the historical-dialogic 
foundations of that idea.

[Ron]
At least I don't think Einstein or Galileo were a committee.

[Arlo]
Einstein and Gallileo are voices in a song. A song made possible by 
the other voices surrounding them, giving them their own voice. 
Again, this position is denigrated (expectedly so) as devaluing the 
"individual" and emphasizing the "collective". It isn't. It is 
recognizing that these are a dichotomy of habit, nothing more. 
Einstein's voice was as much a product of the historical-dialogue 
into which he was acculturated as the specific micro-genetic 
experiences of his particular biological-boundedness.

So, no, Einstein or Galileo were not "a committee", but nor were they 
"lone individuals". My opinion is that we have to stop thinking in 
terms of "individuals-opposed-to-social" and instead see 
"individuals-intrisically-enswarmed-within-social". Mikhail Bakhtin, 
a Russian philosopher, is one whom I cite often as a foundational 
thinker in this regard. One of his concepts is "polyphony". At the 
risk of simplification, this is the belief that all individuals have 
unique voices, but these voices only make sense in juxtaposition to 
other voices. No one speaks in isolation. Our words are always 
derived from, and in anticipation of, the larger cultural dialogue of 
which we participate.

[Ron]
I get the feeling you are holding my Statements to the general 
definitions of SOM being equated with Intellect. It is this very 
definition that I disagree with
And am proposing an alternative definition which better fits Pirsigs 
MoQ concepts.

[Arlo]
Perhaps, Ron. This is my intent as well.

[Ron]
What defines the intellectual pattern is through engagement of the 
individual with their culture.

[Arlo]
This strikes me more as a defining of social patterns. Again, I'd say 
that what defines the intellectual derives from a social-level 
valuation in transcendence. The various intellectual patterns of 
which the intellectual level becomes built emerge from this 
foundational ground. That is, whatever form of transcendence is 
valued at the social level becomes the ground-floor for the edifice 
of "intellectual patterns" which grow from that.

In this way, the "mythologies" of pre-Greek thinkers were, in fact, 
intellectual patterns. They were ideas and understandings of the 
world that were built from the social-level belief that 
"transcendence" was some form of anthropomorphic-being activity. In 
any culture, we can look to their foundational ideas about 
"transcendence" and then see the intellectual-structures built on top 
of that. SOM is an intellectual pattern built of the social-level 
belief that "transcendence" is in natural, orderly, rational, 
understandable, observable and objective processes. The MOQ is an 
intellectual pattern built of the social-level belief that 
"transcendence" is predicated by Quality, a response of all things to Value.

In this way, we can see immediately that all these "intellectual 
structures" are both culturally-rooted, and metaphorically based. 
And, yes, the grow from individual-collective engagement, but also 
precisely from activity towards a particular cultural belief. We 
escape the S/O thinking removes "man" from her/his social activity, 
or places them in antagonistic relations, we see the song that 
emerges from a very particular cultural belief, the belief in the 
nature of "transcendence". And we escape the trap that has ensnared 
many, to use the song to define to the song. To use "intellect" to 
define "intellect".