If things have been too quiet, let me throw some things out there for discussion. I know I'm late to the party so if any of this has been discussed before, feel free to point me in the right direction.
A thing occurred to me while reading Lila that is really a technical point, albeit I think an important one, that doesn't really change any conclusions that Pirsig makes, but that may be worth discussion. Pirsig indicates that the Intellectual level emerges from the social level(and by definition emerged in time after the social level) and thus has moral authority over it. I think this is technically wrong, although the technical reasons don't end up changing many of the conclusions. I think that both the social and intellectual levels emerged out of the biological level. The intellectual did emerge after the social and still holds moral authority over it and still has access to it, but it is more correct to say that it emerged from biology. I think this because it more adequately fits what we see in reality. Our brains have many parts and recent Psychological analysis shows that it also has multiple modes. Kahneman puts this forward in Thinking Fast and Slow ( http://amzn.to/1MzA82R ). Here we see System 1 (Quick Judgments) and System 2 (Methodical Thought) being driven by various parts of the brain and assimilated in the neocortex. The theory is that the more reptilian brain evolved first, and the neocortex evolved with access to these other parts of the brain to add prediction and better fitness. System 1 is the social level brain and System 2 is the intellectual part. System 1 just is and just does. System 2 can override and use simulated expectations as a basis. Ultimately though, both evolutions were biological responses to fitness. Both emerged out of biology and out of what the biological level values (fitness). I think this is important because at one point Pirsig says that a level only has access to the level below it. I think the Intellectual level does have access to the biological(although it has many built in biases because System 1 was around with it developed). System 2 may even be completely reliant on System 1 existing, but it can still reach down through it and act at the biological level. Unfortunately the fallout from this is that distinguishing that the intellectual level should have moral authority over the social level becomes even murkier. Unfortunately this also seems be an accurate map of the territory. I’m from Houston and yesterday we voted down our Houston Equal Rights Ordinance(HERO) because we have a significant portion of our population that has no desire to operate at an intellectual level. It is all still way to social here in the South and social means that that guy over there is going to get one over on me if I don’t take it for myself. Boo us. -- Austin twitter: @afat http://twitter.com/afat ᐧ 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
