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

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, All.

Mary's weekly release of posts is a Quality Event, one can just pick 
and chose. I went for this one for Dave (if it is DMB or WaveDave I'm 
not sure, but believe it's the latter) .  

3 Aug.

Dave had written:
> > 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:

Just one comment. "Not much before the time of classical Greece" is 
a convoluted way of saying "emerging with SOM". ZAMM starts with 
the search for eternal principles, but it's' clear that intellect's break with 
the social mythological reality - the Aretê - started long before this. It's 
said that Homer's "The Iliad" was solidly inside the old age while "The 
Odyssey" shows signs of what we know as SOM. Pirsig's in the PT 
letter ...

    Just when the evolution of the intellectual level from the social 
    level took place in history can only be speculated on. I certainly 
    wasn't there when it happened.

.... is a bit nonsensical. He has created a system wherein the 4th. 
static intellectual level clearly emerges with the Greeks (in the Western 
world) Then, to look at history from the very same intellect's - SOM's - 
p.o.v.  to find when (what intellect - SOM - knows as) "intellect" 
emerges is useless, then one finds "mind" or "thinking" like Dave does.   

Mary to Dave's above:
> 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.

Right, equalizing MOQ's intellectual LEVEL with SOM's "intellect" 
comes so easily, while it requires an effort to perform a metaphysical 
transformation each time . Somehow Pirsig saw this "effort", it's 
reflected in his "resolving a metaphysical dispute at the end of each 
sentence" sentence, so why did HE at uneven intervals abolish the 
very same effort? He also started out correctly with the MOQ as no 
continuation of the Aristotelian metaphysics as another "theory about 
reality" but a new reality (no one can escape metaphysics) But true to 
tradition he soon were back in the traditional vein with the menu/food 
metaphor. Our speculations about Pirsig never ends, it's as if he 
cultivated ambiguity. In the P.T. letter he comes within a hair's breadth 
of confirming the SOL, but seeing the clarity that would result in 
hurriedly added the non S/O "oriental intellect" that again introduced 
the pesky mind-intellect that can think S/O and non-S/O "thoughts". 
Well at least the MOQ is safe now, the weak-interpreters aren't so 
haughty and and exasperated over us SOLists "occupying bandwidth 
and preventing real philosophy" .   

Dave citing LILA:

    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.

As "every schoolboy understands" it' was not Q-intellect that helped 
the biological organisms find food ...etc. throughout the many millions 
of Q-biological development, or the help the social human individuals 
with the same task for the ?? thousand years of Q-social development, 
but INTELLIGENCE, first in biology's service, then in society's and 
when the Q-intellectual development took over it also took over 
intelligence that now was applied to finding "the scientific meaning of 
the universe".   

> > 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.

Nonsense, the level structure is good as gold, but at times Pirsig 
deviates from the way he himself  planned the term "intellect". But as 
said, the MOQ is safe now, the 4th. level can't return to  .... whatever it 
was when the discussion began.    

Bodvar