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

[Mary]

Yeah, that's true if you see the Intellectual Level as 'thinking itself'.
Absolutely.  I'd agree and hail you in your assertion.  You'd be absolutely
right.  How I choose to 'save' Pirsig, is by seeing the Intellectual Level
instead as the pattern of values that *devalues Quality*.  To me, it is SOL
+ *attitude*.  If Pirsig had stuck with this, as was his original idea, we
wouldn't be having these silly arguments around here now.

Best,
Mary

[Dave before]
> 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