Hi Mary, you said to Bo: > I need to get to the rereading, for I am mired in an inability to > distinguish the defining moment separating the Social from the > Intellectual. Why this is so important to me I do not know.
Steve: I think the idea of looking for a moment in time to distinguish social and intellectual patterns is wrong-headed since we participate in both sorts of patterns right now and it is impossible the exact instant when the first intellectual pattern was established. I think a better approach is to consider how patterns are maintained or "latched" today. Social patterns are propagated through unconscious copying of human behavior. From the choice of what patterns are copied we infer such descriptions of social quality as celebrity, style, coolness, righteousness, and status. Intellectual patterns are propagated through unconscious copying of rationales for behavior. From the choice of which patterns are copied we infer such descriptions as truth and parsimony. Intellectual patterns are ideas about which it makes sense to ask, "is this true? or "is there a better or simpler explanation?" Intellectual patterns are habits of mind or patterns of thought. Pirsig defined intellect as the manipulation of symbols that stand for patterns of experience. Social patterns are neither true nor false. They evolved prior to such concepts as true and false. About a social pattern we may ask, "is this behavior acceptable?" Social patterns are not symbolic. They are patterns of behavior of biological entities while intellectual patterns are patterns of behavior of symbols such as numbers, musical notes, or words. You also asked about a fifth level. There is no other type of static pattern of value beyond intellect or the three other types of patterns. There is only unpatterned experience, aka DQ. I hope this helps. Best, Steve 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/
