[Krimel] It would seem that you both are willing to ascribe at least social level behavior to primates. This is my point. The MoQ does not allow this. The social level only applies to humans.
Ron: well you just said Humans are Primates "great apes" to be exact. again I propose that the level be defined by the society. "one chimpanzee is no chimpanzee" this keeps with Pirsigs MoQ by only being able to accurately asses Human definitions. assessing chimpanzee definitions is well, limited. Keeping in mind that we are in no way objective . So it only makes sense that we may only assess Human societies with any kind of accuracy. The same way we may only asses native culture by the definitions of the participants. If we can not decipher those definitions then we may not get an accurate appraisal. [Krimel] But many things are objective in the sense that they govern the lives of both Tarzan and Cheetah regardless of their definitions. The sun rises and sets, the wind blows, the earth shakes, if they fall from a tree they will accelerate toward the ground at 9.8 m/s/s. Ron: Per 21st century western human culture using classic Newtonian physics, yes. Those definitions are defined but I rather doubt Tarzan or cheetah would describe them that way. Krimel: Pirsig specifically says that the social level only includes humans. So any talk of commonality in form or function between human and animal social behavior is off base. Ron: Correct me please but weren't you just arguing that a chimp and a cavalry officer behaved in the same social manner? I think what Pirsig was saying that only members of human society can accurately define human society. Otherwise one anthropomorphizes. If one wants to accurately define Zuni culture one must become Zuni. Krimmel: Such commonalities must be part of the biological level. But if you remove the biologically based elements of human social behavior you really aren't left with much. Ron: you are making my point. Ron added: This is what I was trying to get through to Bo, the intellectual level is meaningless without a cultural definition. Western culture defines intellect as analytical thinking. Bo is correct in this way, but is analytical thinking representative of the universal concept of an intellectual level? hardly, without cultural definitions the level has no meaning. There could very well be an ant hill in Botswana somewhere that dwarfs the intellectual capacity of human beings and we'd never know it. that's whats kinda cool about the MoQ. [Krimel] Or as Douglas Adams would have it, white mice might in fact be protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. But even then under the MoQ they would still be confined to the biological level. Ron: If, technologically advanced extra-terrestrials made contact with us. They would be confined to the biological level? I think MoQ leaves the door open for multiple definitions of patterns within a level. I think this is what Douglas Adams was doing by challenging our assumptions of intellectual beings. I think by virtue of Pirsigs immediate experience, we may only accurately define that which we experience. This is not to mean that other versions are not acceptable. If I was abducted by those hyper-intellectual mice and lived with them in their culture for a vast amount of time, I could give an accurate human appraisal of mouse society. I think Pirsig leaves the door open to Moq and does not limit it to a anthropocentric perspective. He does remind us that anthropomorphizim will exist and the only TRUE description could only come from a member, the only perspective we can ever get of another species society is a human interpretation. Likewise the only interpretation we can understand of Zuni society is through western social interpretation. Consequently, our interpretation of MoQ is a human western society interpretation of MoQ. It is a one size fits all intellectual method Man, Mouse, Eastern, Western ect.... that may only be accurately define by the culture that applies it. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
