[MD] Levels?

[MarshaV]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Krimel" <Krimel at Krimel.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 4:08 PM
Subject: [MD] Levels?


> Bo and anyone else who cares,
>
> I know you see yourself as Pirsig's Apostle Paul but I don't think you 
> fully
> appreciate the aptness of the analogy. Paul likely suffered from frontal
> lobe seizures and was a bit of a psychotic. He also advanced ideas that 
> had
> nothing to do with what the historic Jesus actually said or did and was in
> direct conflict with those who actually knew and understood what the
> historic Jesus said and did.
>
> Your notion that SOM IS a "level" just doesn't fly. SOM is one particular
> set of "intellectual glasses". The intellectual level, whatever that might
> be, involves wearing a set of intellectual glasses not which particular 
> pair
> one might choose.
>
> In addition Pirsig's portrayal of SOM involves particular problems with
> objectivity that are more easily resolved in other ways. In my opinion
> objectivity does not refer to TiTs which as Kant rightly advises us can 
> not
> be experienced or known directly. Rather objectivity refers to our shared
> understanding of things. It is only possible for each of us to know things
> through our own individual experiences. To the extent that we can
> communicate with one another about our shared experiences we can construct 
> a
> picture of an "objective" external world. This is Bohr's notion that 
> physics
> does not teach about what "is" but only what we can "say" about what is.
>
> Among the many reasons why I regard the "levels" as secondary is that they
> are not even remotely "discrete" as Pirsig claims. While the confusion is
> most obvious at the intellectual level, it exists even at the inorganic
> level which is not "discrete" from the biological level at least not in 
> the
> way Pirsig frames it. All life on earth is based on carbon chemistry. In
> fact carbon chemistry is its own branch of chemistry. It is called organic
> chemistry. But Pirsig places it on the inorganic level. One of the 
> problems
> some of our intellectually challenged brethren here on the MoQ have with
> evolutionary theory is how life begins. However and whenever the division
> between the living and the nonliving began it certainly involved organic
> chemistry and when we look at life itself on a molecular level we see no
> clear distinction between what is alive and what is inert.
>
> The "distinction" between the biological and social levels is equally
> arbitrary and certainly not discrete. Social organization or the mutual
> interdependence of individual members of a species is an evolutionary
> strategy employed by many species in nature. From coral to ants and bees 
> up
> through primates many organisms owe their survival to mutual support,
> division of labor and cooperative behavior. Pirsig chose to specifically
> exclude all of this and include only humans at the social level. In so 
> doing
> he misses out on the evolutionary function of social structures and on the
> origins of human social interaction that are so obviously rooted in 
> primate
> social behavior.
>
> E.O. Wilson in developing his sociobiology in the late 70's pointed out 
> that
> human social behavior is deeply grounded in biology. Among the evidence he
> presented for this was the striking similarities among all human 
> societies.
> He claims for example that ants show a much greater variation in social
> structures than humans and few would deny that ant social behavior is
> entirely biological.
>
> Beyond all this is the absurdity of thinking that a set of "levels" so
> blatantly focused on human beings can have "metaphysical" significance. As 
> I
> understand it, metaphysics is the search for a set of principles that 
> would
> apply to any form of "reality" not just ours.
>
> Having said all this I should point out that the "levels" are often 
> useful.
> They are especially useful precisely where Pirsig got them from, the 
> college
> catalog. The various areas of academia are often lumped taxonomically in
> this way. But on the whole I would say this particular set of 
> "intellectual
> glasses" has taken way too much attention away from Pirsig's much more
> important insights regarding the interactions of DQ and SQ.
>
> Krimel



Greetings Krimel,

I thought it might be important to also point out that "Evolution" is also 
useful.

Marsha