Hi Dan
On 28 Feb. you wrote
> Hi Bo, I know you've got your hands full but I have few questions for
> you when you find the time...
> I've read and re-read Robert Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner but fail
> to see how it supports your SOL, Bo. In an effort to see just what it
> is you're getting at, I've copied and pasted the paragraph you cite:
Robert Pirsig to Paul Turner:
There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of
"social" down into the biological with the assertion that, for
example, ants are social, but I have argued that this
extends the meaning to a point where it is useless for
classification. I said that even atoms can be called
societies of electrons and protons. And since everything is
thus social, why even have the word? I think the same
happens to the term, "intellectual," when one extends it
much before the Ancient Greeks.* If one extends the term
intellectual to include primitive cultures just because they
are thinking about things, why stop there? How about
chimpanzees? Don't they think? How about earthworms?
Don't they make conscious decisions? How about bacteria
responding to light and darkness? How about chemicals
responding to light and darkness? Our intellectual level is
broadening to a point where it is losing all its meaning. You
have to cut it off somewhere, and it seems to me the
greatest meaning can be given to the intellectual level if it
is confined to the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols
that have no corresponding particular experience and
which behave according to rules of their own.
Dan comments:
> Mr Pirsig has clearly stated that he feels the best definition of the
> intellectual level has to do with "the skilled manipulation of abstract
> symbols that have no corresponding particular experience and which
> behave according to rules of their own." Could you please explain as
> simply as possible how this equates to intellect = SOM?
I'm under no illusion that Pirsig could come forward and say
"Bodvar is right", but it's the little sentence he tries to make as
inconspicuous as possible
"I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when
one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.*
and even adds the safeguard "much before". Anyway it says that
the Ancient Greeks was the social-intellectual turning point. That
"Ancient Greeks" spells SOM in a MOQ context I guess is plain.
I also know that he hasten to add the "manipulation of symbols"
definition and that the asterix points to an alleged Oriental non-
S/O intellect, but he ends by revealing that he is unsure about the
whole thing (no papal Bull, maybe just bull...)
LILA:
Phædrus remembered now that it had bothered him a little
that in the Odyssey Homer seemed at times to be equating
Quality and celebrity. Perhaps in Homer's time, when
evolution had not yet transcended the social level into the
intellectual, the two were the same.
Bo before:
> > "Homer's time" is the Aretê era before SOM, and according to the
> > above the social level ruled meaning that the emerging SOM was the
> > emerging intellectual level. Get it?
Dan:
> The levels don't actually exist. They're metaphysical tools that point
> towards an ordering of reality, not reality itself.
Here we go, "actually" smelles objectively and we are supposed to
have have left the SOM but so many stays in a curious limbo, like
Marsha who keeps yelping about the levels just concepts ...etc.
The levels exist very much in the MOQ. "Not reality itself"? Reality
is Quality and it comes in the DQ/SQ form.
> That said, I know Mr Pirsig equates the intellectual level's emergence
> with the ancient Greeks but it seems a stretch to equate
> subject/object metaphysics with the intellectual level merely on that
> basis. SOM is a collection of intellectual patterns of value, yes, but
> not the intellectual level itself.
There seemingly is no end to manoeuvres to avoid the obvious.
Ancient Greeks means SOM and if that was the coming of the
intellectual perception of Quality ipso facto. I wonder what
catastrophe you see in the SOL? As said it is supported by half of
LILA and all of ZAMM, is it just the latter-day Pirsig - obviously not
having the full grasp of all he has said - who drags his feet.
Dan:
> Did Paul Turner agree with your SOL? If memory serves, he did not.
> Please correct me if I am mistaken.
No of course not, nobody admits or agrees if they have said
something else before, it's called "prestige", a formidable social
value. Paul just disappeared and opened a blog that so
complicates the MOQ that no one understands a thing.
Thanks for your patience
Bodvar
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