Hi Bo
> Magnus earlier:
>>> Sure it is. It's in direct conflict with your (and Bo's) claim
>>> that symbols are only social value.
>
> Chris:
>> Oh, come now. This is just nonsense. It still isn't in conflict
>> with anything within a MOQ context. We will keep getting back to
>> this.
>
> I have no intention of being drawn into Magnus' distortion machinery,
> how he sees us claiming "Symbols as social value"? is beyond me.
Then please elaborate on how I should interpret this:
Chris:
>>> What about this: Isn't the different patterns supposed to be in
>>> conflict? I mean, each pattern have different ways of
>>> "responding" to quality, and as has been stated many many times
>>> "regard each other as immoral" how can this definition work if we
>>> say that the intellectual level is to look upon symbols as
>>> separate entities? The way I see it, that isn't in conflict with
>>> anything. I mean, one can clearly see how full fledged
>>> rationality may be in conflict with Social Patterns of Value, but
>>> "the ability to manipulate symbols"? What is that in conflict
>>> with?
>
> I can only say "amen", the level struggle (moral codes) is is one of
> the MOQ tenets most pregnant with the SOL interpretation. What threat
> can the social level see in the "manipulation of symbols" or vice
> versa what control of the social level is it in it for intellect? And
> how does the intellectual patterns that LILA lists emerge from the
> symbol manipulation (which is a definition of language anyway) ....
> and why didn't Pirsig spot these "anomalies"?
Aren't both of you saying that symbol manipulation is *not* a level 4
activity? So if it's not level 4, and you say that the social level
don't see a threat, then I assumed you mean it's social. Is that so far
fetched? I'm pretty sure everyone else read it like that, or?
>>> Chris:
>>>> In a way even, we could say that the wolfs reaction to a
>>>> certain scent is the same thing as someone recognizing an arrow
>>>> symbol. Or, take tigers (or whatever) who claw marks into
>>>> trees, when other tigers see the marks they recognize that
>>>> there is another tiger about who claims the area. How is that
>>>> really different from symbol manipulation? At the base I mean.
>
> Scent as information conveyor is a mightily basic and important
> biological value pattern. The so-called "olfactory" brain is the
> bottom layer of the brain hierarchy (the reptilian brain) and even
> for humans a smell can evoke the most vivid memories
Right, but there's no need to involve a brain when talking about scents.
Also brainless animals, one and few-cell animals, react to scents. They
move towards good scents just as atoms move towards gravity sources.
They don't need a brain to determine if it's a good or bad scent. The
big Q level 2 makes the call.
> To harp on this some more and the starting with biology this level
> does not know that a scent is just a signal that signify something
> else, nor does the social level know that a world is just a sound
> symbolizing something else (the written word likewise). This
> distinction belongs solely to intellect, however - and here is the
> clue - intellect (as SOM) does not see this divide as its "value",
> it believes that the manipulation itself is the great thing, this it
> calls "thinking" and that this process takes pace in a mind
> compartment.
This gets really strange. You say biology doesn't know that a scent is
just a signal, and the social level doesn't know that a word is just a
sound symbolizing something else. This distinction belongs solely to
intellect. Ok, I mostly agree with that.
But then, you say this distinction belongs to intellect, yet it is not
level 4?
> This my insistence may sound obsessive, but the "intellect as SOM vs
> intellect as MOQ's 4th level" is crucial.
So, a word is not social, and not your level 4, so what is it?
> The rest is Magnus' suffocating complexity. Before it was the social
> level he saw stretching down into biology, now it's intellect he
> wants to make meaningless. OK, intellect HAS social roots - all
> levels dissolve into its parent level if examined closely enough -
> that's what is meant by being static - the only permanent thing in
> the MOQ is its DQ/SQ chasm.
The only thing I've done is to define the levels in more detail, thereby
making it possible to discuss a time/place where humans aren't the only
ones making quality judgments.
As I said in my previous post, at least Chris is making a much larger
change to the MoQ since he need to extend the biological level to
encompass much of what we mean by intellect. If you don't agree it would
be very interesting to see you two resolve that one.
Magnus
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