From: Peterfabriani@aol.com
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 10:34:59 BST
Hello Sam,
Hi Peter,
Thanks for responding. You're a stimulating interlocutor, even if I
sometimes think we're talking past each other. Probably just my own
obsessions clouding my appreciation of your position. Anyhow:
Peter: I feel the same way, and you have given me a few headaches! Maybe i
should think about altering my position on individuality? The following is
edited from the last post for brevity...
Sam: I thought that was the gist of calling it the intellectual level.
Quality
produces everything, so I agree with the second part - but what is the
vehicle of intellectual evolution? Individual choices.
Peter: If you and i are evolving patterns of value then the patterns are the
vehicle for static evolution, which is a bit of a whatsit - when you say the
same thing twice? I feel the vehicle you search for is a mirage - it is a
static representation of a living narrative. I'm not making much sense am i?
At this point i am going to throw in this quote because something i know not
what has insisted it would be good to do so: 'Music is the electric soil in
which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.' Ludwig van Beethoven.
> From a
> social perspective, Human rights may get in the way of one celebrity
> dominating societies, and may therefore be seen to be intellectual values
> privileging themselves over and above a purely social pattern.
>
Sam: I think you need to unpack this a bit more, as it stands it's a non
sequitur
(that is you haven't argued for it being intellectual).
Peter: Gladly, as far as i am able! There is a differentiation in the values
particular Humans may have due to the level of dominance manoeuvring the
bundle of patterns you wish to describe as an individual. The notion of
'rights' is an intellectually motivated level playing field negating the
obvious differentiation's between people. Democracy behaves in a similar way.
So, the excellent philanthropist dictator cannot gain power? The self serving
egocentric is similarly blocked. Both the philanthropist and the nasty seen
as social entities are here being influenced by an idea. This idea serves to
protect intellectually friendly social institutions such as the church of
reason. Before the church of reason really got a grip, the church nurtured
those patterns that were eventually to turn and bite their backside?
>
> Peter: I see you have a tight grip on this idea and wish to see it
through?
Oh yes. My latest fad :-) which I'm sure will pass at some point, when the
muse decides to leave me.
> Any notion of individuality is a static social pattern.
Sam: This is a potentially strong argument against my thesis (that
individuals
are exclusively social level products). I don't think it holds though.
Clearly there are large components of what make up a 'person' that have
their origin below the fourth level, but for the argument to hold, it would
have to be shown that there are no parts of individuals that operate beyond
the social level. I think there are various grounds for disputing that,
which I have gone into elsewhere. But I think this is a fruitful area for
debate and investigation - precisely where the borders lie.
Peter: For border read category? You are a philosopher i believe? Your
language indicates to me that you have formal training in the art of
philosophy. You are inviting me to argue and i tend to talk in terms of value
as fundamentally given grounstuff of experience. Maybe that is why we appear
to talk past eachother? For me, the MoQ is a poem waiting to be sung and not
an argument. Working this out will be interesting...
> I see this as a
> dynamic social activity and not an intellectual activity; intellectual
> patterns don't require celebrity status to survive - they can lay dormant
for
> hundreds of years before continuing to evolve. Individuals die
biologically
> and in moments of pre-intellectual awareness like ecstatic states.
>
Sam: Intellectual patterns don't require celebrity status to survive - but
they
do require individuals to understand and agree with them, to propagate them
and codify them, to write them down or otherwise transmit them to the
future, to embody them in social organisations. Etc Etc.
Peter: No one exists in a vacuum?
> Peter: Poetry lives in a storm of inspirational madness. Poetry was an
oral
> tradition whereas written text is the product of a rational?
I see a gradual development from pre-Homer through to Aristotle. I think
individuality can actually be seen in the accounts of Achilles and Hector,
but it took the social scene of fifth century Athens for it to flourish.
Sam
Peter: I cannot read Ancient Greek and our modern texts are riddled with
notions of individuality. Please tell me more?
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