Marsha:
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.
>
>
David:
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.
>
>
Marsha:
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.
>
>
David:
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.
>
>
>Bo:
> > "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.
>David:
>I spotted the same fallacy in his (Pirsig's) 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.
Marsha:
I don't see a fallacy, unless of course you mean it's all fallacy.
Biological symbols or not, aren't they still analogies, mental
constructions, spovs, all the way down and all the way up? If I'm missing
something please try to explain.
Hello Marsha,
For the record the computer metaphor I speak of is found at pages 150 - 152
of Lila. When will someone publish indexed versions of ZAMM and Lila? The
underlined words in the above passage quoted by Bo are what I think he and I
see as false. Pirsig is trying to make the point that the four levels of
spovs are independent of each other. I'm not sure I'm right but it seems
that he believes in some kind of alternate mental universe that exists in
parallel with our universe. He's in good company: Plato, Augustus and
Descartes to name a few, but just because they can't see the physical
connection between the top three levels doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Perhaps this is wrong but I don't think anyone has a problem seeing the
direct connection between the inorganic and biological level spovs. But for
some reason they miss the connection between the biological, social and
intellectual levels.
One example given by Pirsig to illustrate the independence of these levels
is suicide, which is supposed to represent a conflict between the biological
and intellectual levels. However in a non-mental (strictly physical)
universe, intellect is a biological function like breathing or digestion. So
suicide is a bunch of brain cells trying to impose their will to cut a bunch
of wrist cells and the conflict is biology vs biology not intellect vs
biology.
I think he believes in a mental universe because at the bottom of page 151
he says:
"Certainly the novel cannot exist in the computer without a parallel
pattern of voltages to support it. But that does not mean that the novel is
an expression or property of those voltages. It doesn't have to exit in any
electronic circuits at all. It can also reside in magnetic domains on a disk
of a drum or a tape, but again it is not composed of magnetic domains nor is
it possessed by them. It can reside in a notebook but it is not composed of
or possessed by the ink and paper. It can reside in the brain of a
programmer, but even here it is neither composed of this brain nor possessed
by it."
The root of the fallacy is his failure to realize that the novel only exists
physically in the brains of the writer and readers. The pattern of voltages,
magnetic domains and ink and paper representations of the novel are only
symbols and have no meaning until a living brain decodes them. It may seem a
small point and is certainly open to question and argument but I believe
getting this right has implications for the MoQ. -david swift
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