[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 23 Jul 2010 at 14:17, David Thomas wrote:

On 7/23/10 12:15 PM, "Platt Holden" <plattholden at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your synthesis and comments I see little I disagree with.

> 1. If highly moral cultures are dominantly guided by intellect, why did
> Pirsig judge many Indian cultures as good.?.
> Comment: I'd like to see someone try to argue that Indian cultures were
> dominated by intellectual values.

Or that they were egalitarian. While the concept of individual land
ownership may have been foreign to them they still ferociously protected
their territory which amounts to the same thing. Nomadic peoples of
necessity kept few private possessions. If you took without permission, a
fellow tribe member's horse, bow and arrows, or anything else, if that
member didn't make you pay (maybe with your life) the tribe did (sometimes
with banishment). There was specialization of craftsmen, barter, gifting,
long distance trade, rare items (shells etc) that served as common currency,
all with little or no governance. All these are essential, abet loathsomely
traditional/social level, precursors to capitalism.

> 6. The distinction between the social and intellectual levels is shaky at
> best, especially the claim there is no direct connection between biology and
> intellect.
> Comment: The key word is "direct."  The intellectual level is more directly
> connected to the social than the biological or inorganic, but is connected
> to all below nevertheless.

I would add that the transfer of information between levels must be both
ways between the social and intellectual. I've taken to thinking that the
two upper levels might be better represented a one level split down the
middle. Isn't odd that a Wikipedia search for "intellect" redirects you to
intelligence and when there you click on "Intellect (disambiguation)" you
find:

> Intellect is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that
> encompasses many related abilities or Intelligence.(a link)

So we are right back to intelligence which is defined:

> Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including
> related abilities, such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding,
> communication, reasoning, learning, learning from the experience, planning,
> and problem solving.

Followed by pages of different theories about what intelligence might be
with little or no agreement on any of them.

Maybe Hume was right that there is no such thing as intellect. Wouldn't that
be a kick in the MoQ's proverbial nuts?

And of coarse all of the above further mutilates the thrice dead corpse of
Bo's SOLBISMSOLAQIPD..BS!  Out Damn Zombies!


[Platt]
Here we part company because there's no doubt that reason and the "scientific 
method," based on the subject-object division, dominates the thinking of the 
law, the government, the military, the academy and other social institutions in 
the West. In addition to the S/O assumption (which can be called "externalism) 
there are many ancillary assumptions supporting the edifice of currently 
acceptable thought, including empiricism, experimentalism and evolutionism. To 
challenge any of these, not to mention determinism, materialism, and mechanism, 
makes you a candidate for electroshock therapy.  Sadly, from the success of 
these assumptions that enabled man to dominate nature, it was just a hop, skip 
and jump to applying the same assumptions to dominate human nature. That 
attempts to do so have for the most part resulted in colossal failures and 
untold suffering has been ignored by many of today's intellectuals. There 
aren't many Dusenberrys in the academy, and none in government bureaucracies.   
  
I read both of Pirsig's books as an assault on this dominant static 
intellectual mode with a solution found in a higher "Dynamic morality."

[David]
All that being said I still think both Pirsig's books are high quality and
valuable. If they did and do open people's eyes to the value of philosophy
in general, and values based philosophy particularly they will have done a
very good thing indeed.

[Platt]
Couldn't agree more. Regards and thanks.