Case said:
I think it is simply not true that the intellectual level is not expressed in the early books of the Bible or among primitive tribes. ...What has happened between these "early" examples and today is quantitative and exponential growth in facts and the ability to store and access facts. This has happen in approximately three stages...

dmb says:
I think the various cognitive structures that Piaget and others have identified in developmental psychology can very easily be used as a sort of window on our collective evolutionary development. You know, our collective evolutionary process is recapitulated in the maturation process of each individual member. Or so we hope. Anyway, Wilber's work presents a variety of concrete ways to make distinctions between magical, mythical and rational cognitive structures, each corresponding to the various worldviews and types of culture. I mean, there is a scientific basis for drawing these sorts of lines. And these lines only imperfectly organize what is observed, of course. The lines are just ways to make sense of what we see in history, in our kids and in ourselves. Are you so much of a positivist and a behaviorist that you have already rejected any such developmental psychology? (And now with a Jerry Sienfeld accent...) I'm mean, come on! What is up with that? I think the comments from the letter are only pointing out that these earlier structures are detectable in ancient artifacts, with the Bible being one of the most well known among them. He's not saying they were stupid or anything like that, of course. He's saying that the difference displays more than just a different set of beliefs. Its reveals a different way of thinking such that intelligent people could hold those beliefs. The bible is full of stuff that simply makes no sense within our contemporary worldview and everybody knows it. The stages or levels explain this difference WITHOUT resorting to the idea that the ancients were just ignorant or stupid compared to us.

Pirsig wrote to Paul:
Just when the evolution of the intellectual level from the social level took place in history can only be speculated on .... [snip] .... but if one studies the early books of the Bible or if one studies the sayings of primitive tribes today, the intellectual level is conspicuously absent. The world is ruled by Gods who follow social and biological patterns and nothing else.

Bo asked:
.., what is missing from the said Biblical age compared to posterity? If that can be pinned down we finally have Pirsig's definition of what constitutes intellect. Of course there are a billion "things" and, not much talk about politics and economics..etc. but you know what I mean.: In a MOQ context what has happened in between?

dmb says:
A leap in the capacity for abstraction. Critical examination, skeptical inquiry, Socratic doubt, call it what you will. As I keep hearing in so many ways, the intellect is defined by the willingness and the capacity to scrutinize the traditional forms culture. Their opposition is analogous to the relationship between the biological and social levels, where the younger level both overcomes the limits of its parent level and tames or mollifies it at the same time. And, since Bo asked, I guesss I'd add that this critical examination doesn't have to be predicated on any particular metaphysical assumptions.

So there's my two cents,
dmb

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