[MD] Loneliness

[John Carl]

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 12:12 PM, <skutvik at online.no> wrote:

John
>
> 12 Sep you wrote:
>
> > Intelligence and Intellect.  Which is the level and which is the
> > aspect?
>
> Help me untangle the Gordic "intellect-intelligence" knot (in the
> American English language) where it seems to have undergone some
> symbiosis.


Yes, I think that might be "our" problem and I "think" I just did.




> Intellect was never meant to be identical to intelligence.
> Animals are regarded intelligent to lesser or greater extent but never
> intellectual - not even the smartest chimps or dolphins.



Yes!  Animals make the best demonstration of the difference between
intelligence and intellectual.



> How could
> Pirsig at first say that the intellectual level was "just thinking" - and a
> lot of participants uphold this fallacy -



Not a fallacy, but a miss understanding perhaps.  We're all working on our
final vocabulary.   Pirsig's an intellectual, so thinking of intellect as
thinking comes somewhat naturally. ... it's hard to think about thinking.
 Its work to objectify objectivism.  So many mirrors!  So little time.

Words have connotations as well as denotations and ambiguity which serves up
both.  To an intellectual, everything is intellect just because that's way
intellectualism is.  You get a lot of intellectuals on a list like this.  In
case you hadn't noticed.

But Mind - or Intelligence is not an upper level or a lower level - it IS
the fourth level and Intellect is simply an aspect of mind.  The S/O aspect
which you call evolutionarily  superior because it has been the driving
force behind the materialistic western civ since the Greeks seems from a
certain view to be the best we've got so far.  But still, just one aspect or
derivative of Mind/Intelligence/Sentience.  AND, as a mental adaptation, it
might be going the way of the dew claw on the dog or man's vestiges of a
prehensile tail.




> all the time it's obvious that it's
> RATIONAL thinking, i.e. the ability to look objectively on things and
> shun everything subjective. That this is SOM  (The Church of
> Reason")  and thus the 4th.level is just as plain.


Making SOM the 4th level is bad metaphysics.  It leaves too much out of the
equation.  You'd need a fifth level called mind, which might work on some
level, but you lose the heart of the MoQ to a plain old philosophical
Idealism.

I think.

Which I personally like to use as a platform, but I'd object to converting
the MoQ to my preference of platform.  What would I use to judge my platform
then?



> John:
> > Yes.  I agree that it does sound like an ok defintion.  And since
> > objectification is SOM, it makes perfect sense that SOM=Intellect.
> > In that regard then, the 4th level is Mind, not "Intellect".
>
>
Bo]


> Are you bent on driving me mad? ;-)


John]

Well it hadn't occurred to me before you mentioned it... but you know, I
think I just might be!



Bo]


> There is nothing wrong with
> MOQ's level design, it's just that it rejects the subject/object
> distinction as existence's fundament,


John]

I don't agree with hierarchical dominance as a model for existence.  Levels
to me are like chords of harmony in music, or dance steps.  There is no
fundamental "lower" or "higher" in existence,  It's a circle that goes up
and down.

Like a roller coaster!




> ergo there is no mind or matter
> in the MOQ


 If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.


> and  what we call "intelligence" does not take place in
> mind because all S/Os are gone with the wind.



Vocab again.  Intelligence is the same as mind.  It has to be.



> The ability to
> manipulate experience (memory) simply emerged with biology's
> increasing neural complexity and with Homo Sapiens' huge brain it
> grew enormously.



Ok, now you're telling stories I've heard before.  Stories with undefined
characters which are doing the "manipulating", "emerging" and "growing".
 Objectifying parts of reality that act in these ways, which is
unnecessarily reductionist for the process you are trying to describe and
confusing metaphysically.

It is probably a function of our objective -oriented linguistics that it
comes across this way, but nevertheless, you gotta see that and fight
through it somehow.

Rhetorically, for instance.

There is no way that increasing neural complexity produces the ability to
manipulate experience.  In fact, biologically it is seen to be the other way
around.  Neurons arise and grow  to hold concepts and percepts, percepts and
concepts do not arise to fit pre-existing biology.

You got your cart pulling your horse there buddy.



> OK, this - at first limited - prowess was (still is)
> used by the biological level for its purpose, then adapted by the social
> level for its purpose and finally by intellect to promote its S/O value.
> And at this level the S/O's flourish.
>
> Bodvar
>
>
Yeah, you're doing it all over the place.  A prowess "used", "adapted" and
"promoted" by the levels as independent entities acting autonomously.  It
just doesn't make any sense, Bo.  It just doesn't make any sense.  Why would
anyone want to think this way?