[MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level

[David M]

Hi DMB


I use a handy and simple little method. Maybe it'll work for you too. If you 
want to know whether a thing is social or intellectual just ask yourself a 
question; what does it serve?

DM: Fine up to a point, we can see someone like Einstein as motivated by 
intellectual interests and values, but when science has become so
institutionalised and professional we get into the whole social and 
motivational nexus of grants and funding and how success is 
determined/found.
In the end we are need to ask what sort of lives do we want to live, what is 
good for us, what do we value and this leads to determining what
sort of society we want. Is not the intellectual always inter-related with 
the social and how we live or would want to live? Knowledge looks
at both how we have got to this point and what possible futures may we seek 
to realise. Our activities always have to be realised collectively
-by agreement with others,which may onclude some private spheres and areas 
of autonomy. We seek flourishing of all as the means to our
own flourishing that cannot be achieved in isolation. All knowledge has an 
impact on society as it changes what is possible and therefore has to
answer to society too, we can only flourish as individuals in a civilisation 
and ideas help to make that more or less possible. Do Pirsig's
concerns about intellect undermining social patterns not require us to seek 
evolution rather than revolution? And this means the cutting edge
must always take into account the lower levels upon which it has to build?