[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 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level


> [Marsha]
> It's an interesting story, isn't it?
>
> [Arlo]
> Yes, the socio-cultural evolution of humans is fascinating. I try to 
> re-read parts of the Columbia History of the World every so often if for 
> no other reason that to place in perspective "modern life".

It's your choice on what ever plate your static is served.


>
> [Marsha]
> Please describe and explain the deliberation and purposefulness of each 
> level?  If you would enjoy adding 'freedom', be my guest.
>
> [Arlo]
> Patterns on every level have an agency of action that is both enabled and 
> constrained by the particular level of that pattern. Atoms can only "act" 
> inorganically. Possums can only "act" biologically. But a possum has a far 
> wider range of agency that an atom. A possum's movements and actions to, 
> say, satiate hunger are deliberate and purposeful towards those ends. 
> While the possum cannot "act" socially (say formulate a plan to purchase 
> some apples from the local grocer, or decide to accept his hunger in lieu 
> of a larger meal "later"), when the possum is hungry it will move 
> deliberately and purposefully to act on its hunger. When it rummages, it 
> does so with the deliberate intent of finding something edible. When it 
> catches the scent of food, it moves deliberately to find the source of the 
> smell.
>
> Obviously, these deliberations appear unsophisticated to the human who can 
> act socially. Human can use language (social), the possum cannot. Humans 
> can plan and deliberate a course of action beforehand, the possum cannot. 
> But along the way, neither the social human or the biological possum is 
> "automated". The possum is responding in immediate dynamic ways to changes 
> and experiences it encounters along the way. The point is that both the 
> possum and the human are acting "deliberately" and "purposefully", even 
> though the possum's actions are not nearly as sophisticated as the humans.

Okay.


>
> "Freedom" is simply a word to describe the range of agency open to the 
> "individual", whether its an individual possum, an individual human or an 
> individual atom. Obviously, the range of agency increases as one moves up 
> the MOQ scale, that's the point to the evolutionary hierarchy, to engender 
> greater and greater ranges of agency, of freedom. But there is freedom on 
> all the levels, and that is important. Again, it is not 
> "freedom/no-freedom" when comparing levels but "freedom/greater-freedom", 
> or better "agency/greater-agency".

This sounds like you're addressing someone else's criticism.

>
> [Marsha]
> 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.
>
> [Arlo]
> No. And maybe I break from Pirsig on this point, but again I see 
> "intellectual patterns" as a sort of "meta-intellect", as patterns that 
> emerge as social symbols become objects of inquiry themselves. And this is 
> a matter of word confusion as well. If we use the term "intellect" to 
> refer to the manipulation of symbols in the mind, then this intellect is 
> both a social and "intellectual" level feature. The difference (for me) is 
> that while the manipulation of symbols on the social level involved using 
> abstract symbols to enable social activity, the manipulation of symbols on 
> the intellectual level involves the examination of symbols themselves. 
> Thus, coming up with quantification descriptors to describe variances in 
> amount of apples "one", "two" and "seven" was a social level symbolic 
> manipulation. However, "mathematics", that became interested in the 
> symbols "one", "two" and "seven" as objects of inquiry themselves is an 
> intellectual level of symbolic manipulation.
>

Sounds good to me.


> [Marsha]
> 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?
>
> [Arlo]
> I think I may have answered this above (or tried to), but simply that the 
> repertoire of options any "thing" has open to it depends on the level that 
> "thing" is on. A possum has a much narrower range of agency (repertoire of 
> actions) than a human, but it also has a considerably wider range of 
> agency than at atom.

I agree.


>
> [Marsha]
> 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.
>
> [Arlo]
> What I was trying to show is that "conformity" is not a feature of any one 
> level, it is a feature of them all. Those who say "the social level is 
> conformity, the intellectual level is freedom" are simply wrong. As I 
> said, the thrust of ZMM was about the conformity of western intellectual 
> patterns. Both the social level and the intellectual level afford the 
> "individual" with certain freedoms, and both bring with it a force of 
> conformity.

The Social level often repeats patterns because "things have always been 
done that way" and the reasoning has long gone.  Peter L. Berger and Thomas 
Luckmann's book, 'The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the 
Sociology of Knowledge' was a first clue to this lack of awareness.  I would 
expect the Intellectual Level to include interest in and awareness of 
underlying, influencial patterns.


>
> [Marsha]
> To me the individual is one of those illusions.  Then a collective could 
> only be???
>
> [Arlo]
> An illusion, of course.
>
> [Marsha]
> No individual.  No collective.  For me, ever-changing, collections of 
> overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual, 
> static patterns of value.
>
> [Arlo]
> Absolutely. What I was pointing, what I said was, "depending on the 
> context of one's focus". One can zoom in an conceptually identify "an 
> individual biological pattern", but this "individual pattern" is not only 
> made of smaller individual patterns acting collectively, but it's 
> collective activity creates higher patterns.

Yes, I agree.  There are similarities between these collections of patterns 
that give them strength, but also differences to a lesser or greater degree 
based on experience.  And I think patterns are interrelated with other 
patterns.  I really do like the net-of-jewels model.


But, yes, I agree,
> the act of "zooming" could also be seen as the act of creating illusions. 
> I am reminded of the motorcycle analysis in ZMM. You can divide the 
> motorcycle into any number of different "patterns", but none of these 
> patterns are "primary", that is none exist before the analytic knife 
> creates them.
>

I remember trying to flowchart the systems and components of a motorcycle. 
It was frustrating, fun, and I made quite a mess of it.

I agree with much of your interpretation.  It is a well written explanation. 
(Meaning even I understood it.)  I think it impossible to untangle a 
collection of interrelated, ever-changing collection of inorganic, 
biological, social and intellectual patterns, but you've made some valid 
points.

Marsha