[MD] Bo's right! For all the wrong reasons? (Part2)

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Dave,

I have no problem with them evolving largely in parallel ?
(I have many times lumped social and intellectual into "cultural".)
The levels are to distinguish the different processes at work.
The reigning confusion is really about defining the intellectual,
despite Pirsig's journey of discovery in his rhetoric - there is no
way his words were "definitive" without interpretation, that's not
news either. I believe there is a commonly understood distinction
between intellectual and social patterns - whatever Bo or Pirsig says
about the initial evolution of SOMism.

The pragmatic value is in how useful the model is, not some point
scoring over which Greek invented which idea first.

In my view the levels are the least contentious aspects of the MoQ.
The difficult part is the mystical monism of quality & DQ at its core,
and how this relates to radical empirical ideas. Contentious, not
because it's wrong, but because it's hard to sell mystical monism in
the modern world. But difficulty is not a reason to jump ship, whereas
something better would be.

You are still ignoring my repeated question, however .... so what,
next, instead ? .... if you discard the MoQ entirely, throw the entire
brood out with the bathwater. By definition it must be an improvement
on the MoQ so I would like to hear it - it's not a trick question.

Ian

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:01 PM, David Thomas
<combinedefforts at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Ian,
>>
>> That says intellect pre-dates science & philosophy, not that intellect
>> pre-dates the intellectual level. No surprise that intellect is used
>> to rationalised society's actions.
>>
> I think in his response to being ask when the intellectual level emerged he
> said something to the effect, "That he couldn't see it emerging much before
> the time of Classical Greece" Which most historians and philosophers claim
> is the birthplace of science and philosophy. Later under further questioning
> he allowed that maybe it could have also emerged in early Indian
> religion/philosophy but it didn't take the SOM course. He then goes on to
> say:
>
>>>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." (Lila, 24)
>
> Then when, historically, did people first find not the need, but the
> physiological and particularly the mental where-with-all to actually change
> their behavior and environment to do something meaningful about fulfilling
> these needs? This certainly was thousand if not hundreds of thousands of
> years before Classic Greeks. So if the biological level emerged with the
> first twinkle of life, how is it that the intellect emerged and somehow
> existed without a level to occupy for thousand of years? It didn't.
>
> Hence my conclusion that it is highly probable that evolution of the brain
> in humans reached a point such that what separates animal social behavior or
> values from human social behavior or values is what we now commonly call the
> intellect. Therefore Pirsig's claim that the intellectual level emerged out
> of human society is wrong. The a minimum they emerged and evolved in
> parallel. Which means the whole MoQ level structure and moral relationship
> are also wrong.
>
> Dave
>
>
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