Hi Dave and Bo, Dave, your first Pirsig quote from ZMM, below, seems to bolster my contention that the Intellectual Level is an attitude rather than an actual difference in kind between the mind of early man and modern. What I've been saying is that the Intellectual Level represents basically the mindset of the scientific method, which serves its own purposes rather than those of society or belief systems. So for me, so far so good. What else does he say? Does he contradict himself later on?
ZMM [Pirsig] Pg 19: "My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn¹t that superior. IQs aren¹t that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man." -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Thomas Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2010 11:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Intellect's Symposium Hi Bo, > Hi Dave, good to see you again Thanks. Not sure it's really all that good here. The ongoing fires consume most of the space , smoke obscures almost everything, and if the air gets unbreathable I'll have to head back outside. > 13 Jan. you said:: >> [Dave] >> It appears that the bulk of these discussions focusing on the social >> and intellectual patterns have devolved into either banging on Pirsig, >> or on one another, or both. > >> Is there a middle way? Naw, bang¹n fun! It¹s the intellect¹s modus >> operandi. > >> In ZaMM ³intellect² is mentioned twice. First in the shim episode >> early on when we read: "My own opinion is that the intellect of modern >> man isn¹t that superior.² Then a little later when he became >> disillusioned with Kant , moved to oriental philosophy and then >> dropped out of Beneres in disgust and says: ³He had had the feeling of >> escape from a prison of intellect, and now this was just more of the >> prison again.² > [Bo] > Good idea to search ZAMM for the term "intellect" and "intellectual" > Dave. The first example "...the intellect of modern man...etc." is a bit > ambiguous as if there is an intellect of pre-modern man. i.e. that > "intellect" is a thinking faculty. The second "...prison of intellect" > however is more like what it's all about, namely REASON or SOM. In > other words that intellect is NOT thinking itself , but a mode of thinking > and that another mode is possible. Exactly what the SOL interpretation > is about. [Dave] Whoa Bo! Before we jump off into my or your conclusions let's try to figure out what RMP is saying and agree on that. In order to facilitate that I cut and pasted each instance in both books in order they appear into a single document. I have tried to keep enough context (usually the paragraph or so) to aid interpretation. I will PM you a copy if you want. What I am doing is reading the quote and then red lining my comments underneath. What I'm proposing is to kill two birds with one stone. First treat ZaMM as MoQ-1. Treat Lila as MoQ-2. Then using just the one word "intellect" and derivatives compare and contrast how he uses them in both places to see if we can shed some light on the issue. For instance first full quote in ZaMM: [Pirsig] "Pg 19: John nods affirmatively and I continue. "My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn¹t that superior. IQs aren¹t that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know." "What?" "Oh, the laws of physics and of logicthe number systemthe principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real. "They seem real to me," John says. "I don¹t get it," says Chris. [Dave] My translation of what RMP is saying: The IQ, intelligence, and intellect (regardless what these words mean) of modern man (you & me right now) are not substantially different* from those of medieval man, Indians in Montana when he was there . And I'm pretty sure he would agree, Indians that lived there at the time of medieval man. *(Except ,as he says later, in the 'context of their thought' which has to do with the differences in what their cultures consider "real") Do we agree? If we do your: "ambiguous as if there is an intellect of pre-modern man" concern goes away. RMP says humans have these characteristics, qualities, (again regardless what they mean) back to at least medieval times in both Europe and America. If one understands and agrees with the biological evolutionary theory of Darwin, even a little bit, this conclusion it not at all surprising or unlikely. Agreed? An aside. (I think an important one) when the word "evolution" popped into my mind above I decided to search both texts for its use. ZaMM (1) Lila (82) A huge difference. In comparing and contrasting MoQ-1 and MoQ-2 "evolution" is not used in the first at all and is a significant part of the second. Even though the many branches of evolutionary science have been making big strides in last 50 years they still have not come up with definitive agreements between them on what, when, why, where, etc makes humans different (or not) from all rest. And this is particularly the case of what qualities developed in our human ancestors allowed them to emerge from biological level. So the misunderstanding and discord here is in part because of the lack of progress and agreement in science. Enough for now. This may seem like a slow slog but I can see no other way to do it. Tur-tle-ly Yours, Dave 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/ 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/
