Hi Platt
Sun Feb 21. you said
> Pirsig makes the point (LC Note 50) that higher mathematics and
> computer languages, which are not structured into subjects-objects
> (SOM), would not have a "home" unless part of the MOQ's intellectual
> level....
Math is just a term for calculation after the intellectual level - the
Greeks - made it an academical branch. But calculation itself - and
there aren't calculations without manipulation of symbols (following
rules of logic?) is something people have done since God knows when
and no one will claim that Stonehengers were "intellectuals" when
calculating the point of vernal equinox or the Egyptians doing their
calculation when building the Pyramids.
"Computer language" is just another language even if using other
symbols and grammar and - likewise - no on would say that the
Neanderthals and Cro Magnons were intellectuals only because they
had language and manipulated its symbols by rules of grammar and
syntax. Even Pirsig makes a fool of himself in his effort to avoid the
conclusion that most of LILA points to. In "Lila's Child" however, he
suddenly found the SOL conclusion offensive and produced some of
the most un-moqish annotations I know.
> .... As I understand your position, the intellectual level is the level
> of subject-objects or SOM.
The intellectual level emerged as SOM in ZAMM and it was not
subjects and objects falling down from the sky, but the Greeks who
began to think independently of the old social context and through
many stages arrived at the first recognizable SOM the notion of Truth
veiled by what Appeared to be true, but were illusions. Then the many
dichotomies of what was true and what was illusory ...all this is known
by us Pirsigeans. Exactly when the subject/object dualism arrived I
don't know, but at least after Descartes "things" became material
objects and what observed them were mental subjects, and the
paradoxes created by this fault line began to emerge ..... not to be
fixed until Pirsig.
> So where in your interpretation would you put such non-SOM intellectual
> systems as computer languages and higher mathematics? In other words,
> how do you answer Pirsig's need to find a "home" for these
> "intellectual" inventions?
Calculation and language are not "intellectual inventions" but these
fancy-sounding names surely are. I treat non-S/O as non-intellectual
patterns. Calculation is an intelligence-brain-related ability i.e. a
biological pattern, animal show signs of intelligence and I guess some
primates can calculate to a limited extent. Now, IMO the big human
neo-cortex brain were the biological stepping stone to the social
development so at this level - particularly after language - calculation
methods advanced and (seven-league boots on) when we come to the
Babylonians and Egyptians they used every calculation methods there
are only they never calle it anything. With the Greeks and the
intellectual level all these things were systematized into academical
fields, theorems were worked out to show why/how all this worked
...objectively seen. Just ask Ron he knows ;-).
Bodvar
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