From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 17:14:09 GMT
Platt, Wim, all,
>> Steve: I can see how rocks, plants, animals, people, and ideas fall
>> neatly into the categories but what about crime, democracy, terrorism,
>> communism, capitalism, dancing monkeys and others that have been debated by
>> this group that seem much less obvious to me.
>
>Platt: Call me simplistic. Crime-biological. Democracy-social. Terrorism-
> biological. Communism-social. Capitalism-social. Dancing monkeys-
> biological. (I'd like to see some corroboration for that monkey story.)
>
Steve:
What I'm interested in is how you make such categorizations. How do we know
that crime, for example, is biological? I know Pirsig said it is, but I
don't why. I want to be able to categorize for my self.
>>> Wim said earlier:
>>> "I know how to categorize patterns of values: by the way they are
>> maintained/latched. (inorganic: unequal probability distributions in the
>> quantum behavior of subatomic particles; biological: DNA stabilized by
>> protein structures around it; social: unconscious copying of behavior;
>> intellectual: conscious motivation/justification of actions in a way that
>> is acceptable to others). I can categorize values indirectly by
>> interpreting them as the value of maintaining a pattern of values of one of
>> these types (i.e. as static quality) or as the value of changing a pattern
>> of values away from disintegration (i.e. as Dynamic Quality)."
>>
>> The above is the formulation that DMB called, "so confusing, so wrong, and
>> so bizarre that I'd hardly know where to begin to untangle it. "
>
> Platt: I agree it's confusing, but I'm not prepared to say it's wrong just
because
> I don't understand it. I disagree when Wim says the intellectual level has
> to be "acceptable to others." As soon as you bring in "others" you're
> into social level patterns.
Steve:
I questioned Wim on this point. In case you are interested...
[Steve] wrote 26/11 12:39 -0500:
'Do you stand by the definitions that you gave for how patterns are latched?
The last one about intellectual patterns being latched "in a way that is
acceptable to others" has a social ring to it. Would it make sense to say
that intellectual patterns are latched as mental structures of the kind that
one is conscious of ie concepts?
Wim responded:
"Yes, I stand by my description of the way the intellectual level is
latched:
'conscious motivation/justification of actions in a way that is acceptable
to others'. I consciously gave it BOTH a social ring AND an individual ring
(by refering to individual actions). In my view the distinction between
social and individual in the MoQ is not related to a distinction between
phenomena that can or can't be interpreted as 'collective'. Both social and
intellectual patterns of values combine an 'individual' (in the SOM sense)
aspect ('habit' and 'idea'/'symbolic representation') and a collective
aspect (sharing/copying/passing on habits/ideas/symbolic representations).
Intellectual patterns need for their 'latching' more individuals and
communication between them. An 'idea' or 'concept' that is not applied in
communication loses its meaning and effectively dies (even if it can be
conserved and 'sleep' for quite a long time by committing it to paper or
other media)."
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