Dear Marsha yesterday you said:
I'm not talking about dreams. Static patterns of
value are much more than words. Think about
something, zebras for instance. What comes to
mind? If all you can experience are words and
sentences, you have my sympathy. Can you conjure
up the memory of the smell of an orange? The
memory of its color, shape, surface texture,
'orange', its taste, etc.? Can you remember
making fresh orange juice? Can you see the pulp
floating in the glass? Memory is more than
words. Does the memory of orange blossoms come
to mind? Orange groves? Do you know you cannot
wear anything the color orange? Does your body
respond? Does your mouth water? I could write
for weeks on what comprises an orange pattern and
its overlapping relationships.
Or do you get only something like:
An orange?specifically, the sweet orange?is the
citrus Citrus sinensis (syn. Citrus aurantium L.
var. dulcis L., or Citrus aurantium Risso) and
its fruit. The orange is a hybrid of ancient
cultivated origin, possibly between pomelo
(Citrus maxima) and tangerine (Citrus
reticulata). It is a small flowering tree growing
to about 10 m tall with evergreen leaves, which
are arranged alternately, of ovate shape with
crenulate margins and 4?10 cm long. The orange
fruit is a hesperidium, a type of berry.
>
>
I once wrote a whole chapter (The Epicurean Concept of Mind, Meaning and
Knowledge) arguing that feelings (using David Hume's definition that all
perceptions are feelings) are the basic biological level of symbol: the only
level used by babies and other nonverbal animals to understand meaning. And
that words are the same meaning translated to a social level. I argued that
although the verbal level overwhelms the feeling level in the consciousness
(especially in white males) the ability to read and write words is the
ability to make this translation back and forth.
>
>
Today you said:
Zebra is a static pattern of value, an ever-changing mental construction
extracted from Dynamic Quality. There is not an external object Zebra, but
only the overlaid pattern whose label is zebra. Zebras exists only by
conventional recognition of the pattern. The Zebra-spov would fall into the
Biological Level. Where you want to stick the word 'zebra' is where I get
somewhat confused. Because language is a social phenomenon, I would tend to
put it in the Social Level.
>
>
I would now argue you are correct, the word Zebra is a social level symbol
but the interesting part for me is that either feelings or words can be used
on the intellectual level. As anyone who has had a thought that they
couldn't verbalize can tell you.
>
>
Coincidentally and also yesterday Bo said:
> "Not in the sense that the other levels are "real"
and intellect "represents" them, this is the fallacy that Pirsig
commits at the beginning of the "symbol manipulation" definition:"
Intellectuality occurs when these customs as well as
biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
that stands for them and these signs are manipulated
independently of the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can
then be defined very loosely as the level of independently
manipulable signs. Grammar, logic and mathematics can
be described as the rules of this sign manipulation.
I spotted the same fallacy in his computer metaphor (Lila) of course the
meaning of the novel being written on the computer exists in all levels of
the computer (electrical charge, binary, number and letter symbol levels).
One only needs to learn how to read the specific symbol level to be able to
read the words which are actually just symbols for the biological level
feelings -david swift.
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