Arlo, After reading your last post I'm sure we are on the same page. On a lighter note, we must set up a meeting this year, Anyone who makes Jello biafra References and social distortion comments is my kinda peoples. I'd love to match wits over an imperial stoudt at boxers In Huntingdon sometime. Unfortunately my bike did not pass inspection and most likely will not be able to roll on two wheels until april but, It doesent mean we can't meet up on 4. Hopefully we can work something out. Have to see what the war dept. says (wife). -Ron
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Arlo Bensinger Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 2:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [MD] subject/object: pragmatism [Arlo previously] Intellectual patterns are an attempt to codify, quantify and/or describe aspects of this transcendence. And the underlying social and cultural beliefs about this transcendence guide and structure our orientation to it. [Ron] True, and I'd add that an individual may arrive at this themselves and express this concept so that it may become a social and cultural belief which guides And structures our orientation to it. [Arlo] The responses in this thread have quickly overtaken my ability to respond to all points. When you say "an individual may arrive at this themselves", I still see echoes of the lone-subject observing the objective-world, trying to overcome social distortions (not the old punk band) and see the world clearly. You may not think this, but this is (I believe) the heritage of the words you have chosen. Rather than looking at the "individual" and the "collective" as not only disconnected, but antagonistic, entities, I prefer the dialogically entwined, and philosophically co-dependent, "individual-colllective". In this sense, no "individual" arrives at anything "themselves", in the sense of outside of, or irrespective of, the social-world they are intrinsically connected to. The MOQ, for example, is not a product of "Pirsig himself", but a point in a long dialogue echoing back to the Greeks (and from there, further still), and amassing a chorus of thoughts, words, beliefs and ideas. Socially, we are accustomed to ascribing "proprietary" ownership of an idea to "one person" rather than see the historical-dialogic foundations of that idea. [Ron] At least I don't think Einstein or Galileo were a committee. [Arlo] Einstein and Gallileo are voices in a song. A song made possible by the other voices surrounding them, giving them their own voice. Again, this position is denigrated (expectedly so) as devaluing the "individual" and emphasizing the "collective". It isn't. It is recognizing that these are a dichotomy of habit, nothing more. Einstein's voice was as much a product of the historical-dialogue into which he was acculturated as the specific micro-genetic experiences of his particular biological-boundedness. So, no, Einstein or Galileo were not "a committee", but nor were they "lone individuals". My opinion is that we have to stop thinking in terms of "individuals-opposed-to-social" and instead see "individuals-intrisically-enswarmed-within-social". Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher, is one whom I cite often as a foundational thinker in this regard. One of his concepts is "polyphony". At the risk of simplification, this is the belief that all individuals have unique voices, but these voices only make sense in juxtaposition to other voices. No one speaks in isolation. Our words are always derived from, and in anticipation of, the larger cultural dialogue of which we participate. [Ron] I get the feeling you are holding my Statements to the general definitions of SOM being equated with Intellect. It is this very definition that I disagree with And am proposing an alternative definition which better fits Pirsigs MoQ concepts. [Arlo] Perhaps, Ron. This is my intent as well. [Ron] What defines the intellectual pattern is through engagement of the individual with their culture. [Arlo] This strikes me more as a defining of social patterns. Again, I'd say that what defines the intellectual derives from a social-level valuation in transcendence. The various intellectual patterns of which the intellectual level becomes built emerge from this foundational ground. That is, whatever form of transcendence is valued at the social level becomes the ground-floor for the edifice of "intellectual patterns" which grow from that. In this way, the "mythologies" of pre-Greek thinkers were, in fact, intellectual patterns. They were ideas and understandings of the world that were built from the social-level belief that "transcendence" was some form of anthropomorphic-being activity. In any culture, we can look to their foundational ideas about "transcendence" and then see the intellectual-structures built on top of that. SOM is an intellectual pattern built of the social-level belief that "transcendence" is in natural, orderly, rational, understandable, observable and objective processes. The MOQ is an intellectual pattern built of the social-level belief that "transcendence" is predicated by Quality, a response of all things to Value. In this way, we can see immediately that all these "intellectual structures" are both culturally-rooted, and metaphorically based. And, yes, the grow from individual-collective engagement, but also precisely from activity towards a particular cultural belief. We escape the S/O thinking removes "man" from her/his social activity, or places them in antagonistic relations, we see the song that emerges from a very particular cultural belief, the belief in the nature of "transcendence". And we escape the trap that has ensnared many, to use the song to define to the song. To use "intellect" to define "intellect". 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