[MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level

[MarshaV]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arlo Bensinger" <ajb102 at psu.edu>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level


> [Marsha]
> I cannot say what you describe is done without deliberation and purpose, 
> but they are not focused on the improvement of the Social Level, which is 
> a part of the MOQ definition of the Intellectual Level's function.
>
> [Arlo]
> I think there are many examples of deliberate and purposeful social 
> activities whose aim is to improve the overall social condition. When 
> early humans began to cultivate food crops, rather than relying on 
> foraging, the overall social conditions of humans improved considerably. 
> When a new baseball stadium is built it may improve the social situation 
> of that city in many ways, from increasing trade and tourism, to 
> restaurant revenues, to giving families a place to bond on sunny summer 
> afternoon.
>
> That is, there is organic change from within the social level, it is not 
> something "fixed" and reliant on intellectual patterns for change. Of 
> course, intellectual patterns can exert a tremendous force on social 
> patterns, changing them drastically. But if you trace the history of 
> social evolution from earliest tribes of humans to, say, the pre-Socratic 
> civilizations, you see a steady and purposeful evolution towards 
> improvement in social conditions.

It's an interesting story, isn't it?



> It is for this reason I say we are not talking about 
> deliberate/non-deliberate or free/non-free distinctions, but differing 
> levels of evolution in which deliberation and freedom are integral parts 
> of each, just as automatism and conformity are integral parts of each.

 Please describe and explain the deliberation and purposefulness of each 
level?  If you would enjoy adding 'freedom', be my guest.  You keep flipping 
it into the conversation.  You can say the story anyway you'd like to.

RMP:
"The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an ultimate 
meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical 
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat 
enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents 
for this purpose."

Are you equating 'intellect' with the Intellectual Level?  But more to the 
point, I'm more interested in the fact that intellect invents the concepts.


>Too many, I think, are looking for descriptive differences between the 
>levels (individual/collective, free/conformitive, deliberate/automatic, 
>DQ-responsive/DQ-nonresponsive) when, to me, these are all part of every 
>level, its just that the range of agency increasing exponentially as one 
>moves up the levels.

All levels are concepts so of course intellect has been participating.  What 
do you mean by the expression "its just that the range of agency increasing 
exponentially as one moves up the levels.  What exactly does this mean?


>
> When humans transitioned from biological to social beings, their range of 
> agency was vastly increased. The range of opportunity for action, 
> deliberate and purposeful actions, made the constrictions of the 
> biological level appear to be a prison. However, this appearance masked 
> the fact that the transition from inorganic to biological beingness also 
> vastly increased the range of agency for biological creatures. The freedom 
> of the biological level made the inorganic look to be the prison. On all 
> of these levels, however, the beings within are given a wider range of 
> freedoms than the previous. And so it is not a matter of "this level is 
> free, that level is conforming", but "this level extends the repertoire of 
> wo/man's agency exponentially". Conformity, or as I prefer "habituated 
> activity", is evidenced as much on the intellectual level as on the social 
> level. Indeed, the entire thrust of Pirsig's criticism in ZMM is on 
> Western Intellectual Conformity, the static patterns that have produced 
> habituated intellectual activity that reifies S/O duality.

I am so not on the same academic page as you.   You're discussing exerting 
power and influence.  I'm after how it's all a wisp of momentary mental 
illusion which can represent any number of different points-of-view.


>
> It is the same with the individual-collective descriptors. All levels 
> contain "individuals in collective activity". There is no one level of 
> "the individual" and another of "the collective".

To me the individual is one of those illusions.  Then a collective could 
only be???


All levels,
> depending on the context of one's focus, are the activity of "individuals 
> in collective activity". This describes the inorganic as well the 
> intellectual levels.

No individual.  No collective.  For me, ever-changing, collections of 
overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual, 
static patterns of value.


 > Yes, saw the spider on caffeine. Very illuminating. Or were you
> referring to the spoof video with the spider on crack?

They may be one in the same.  For the record, I've never been in the same 
room with crack or cocaine.  Caffeine is bad enough.


Marsha