Dear focus group: Sam's thesis for discussion: "Pirsig's conception of the intellect, as expressed most recently in his letter to Paul Turner of 27 September 2003, is incoherent and unsustainable."
Sam said: My contention is that the understanding of intellect offered by RMP *cannot* work in the way that is required for an adequate description of the fourth level. The key element in my argument here is that 'intellect' as such has no independent power of decision making ... it comes from an interaction with our emotions and personal history, as embodied in the various physionomic responses and interactions between viscera and brain - and therefore it cannot act as the 'choosing unit' within the fourth level. dmb says: Machine language interface? Choosing unit? I'm not sure I understand what that's all about or why such things are required for Pirsig's concept of intellect to be coherent. But it might help to simply point out that Pirsig never asserts that intellect is independent from the rest of our humanity. As he puts it, we are "a complex forest of static patterns" from all of the levels. I'm pretty sure he'd freely admit that each of the levels plays a role in our decision making. His expanded brand of empiricism asserts that our knowledge begins with the biological senses. In chapter 30 he says that the MOQ asserts "that intellectual static patterns of quality are built up out of social static patterns." And in chapter 24 of Lila he explains that the social level also plays a role in the intellectual level. "Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived. Nature tells us only what our culture predisposes us to hear. The selection of which inorganic patterns to observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological patterns of value." There are many quotes along these lines. I don't know that we'll find him using the specific terms "emotion" or "viscera", but it seems quite clear to me that the biological and social levels are where we'd locate such things. He insists that the levels are discrete, but not independent. He describes it several times in terms of a parent and child relationship, a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. The intellect rests upon and depends upon the lower levels for its very existence. "Just exactly HOW independent IS science, in FACT, from society?" The MOQ's answer is, "Not at all." In other words, I think your premise is mistaken and it is this mistake that has lead you to a false conclusion; that Pirsig's concept is incoherent. Sam said: When making this argument, and discussing it in the MD list, several commentators said that the definition of intellect that I was crediting to RMP was not in fact his intended use. That is, RMP was employing a 'broad' understanding of intellect, ie it was anything 'thought', and that it therefore included the emotions etc which are necessary for 'intellect' to be able to decide anything, and therefore function as a 'choosing unit'. However, that line of defence is not compatible with RMP's most recent comment that "the greatest meaning can be given to the intellectual level if it is confined to the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular experience and which behave according to rules of their own". dmb says: Right. Pirsig's comment dispells the notion that intellect is any kind of thought, including emotions and such. But using that notion to try to defeat your argument is just a battle of misinterpretations. I'd like to suggest that since the task here is to determine the coherence of Pirsig's concept we'd do well to focus on the things Pirsig has actually said about intellect. I mean, I hope we're going to discuss Pirsig's metaphysics, and nobody else's, in this forum. Sam said: To my mind RMP has given no account of WHAT is doing that skilled manipulation; and the intellect, as commonly understood and described by RMP, CANNOT perform that skilled manipulation. dmb says: I don't understand. If Pirsig DEFINES intellect as "the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols", how is it possible to assert that intellect "cannot perform that skilled manipulation"? Thanks for your time. MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_focus/ MF Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_focus follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/mf/subscribe.html
