[Pirsig] "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic nature." (LILA)
[MRB] Well, in the literal sense, Bob's right... [Arlo] I'd say he's just plain right about this, literally or figuratively. This is the basic evolutionary hierarchy of his ideas. [MRB] But if this is hard social constructionism, it's not so. [Arlo] There are many theorists that promote a similar idea to Pirsig in this regard (intellect emerges from social patterns), from Vygotsky to Bourdieu to Archer to Bakhtin. And they are all, in this regard, correct. I can understand why this would be troubling to a right-winger, since it pretty much demolishes their foundational myth of the lone glorious individual in eternal battle against the evil society, but that's hardly my concern. "As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language." Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived. The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit. Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever. It is easy to see the historic reasons for this myth of independence. Science might never have survived without it. But a close examination shows it isn't so." (LILA) 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/md/archives.html
