From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 30 2005 - 01:45:58 BST
Hi Platt,
I've moved our discussion over to this new thread.
[Arlo]
Except the brujo was not one, single "solitary" soul. If he was, he would have
been nothing more than a set of high Quality biological patterns.
[Platt]
> He was the sole individual "responsible" for saving his tribe. Without
> him, the social layer from which he emerged would not have evolved and
> instead gone the way of the dinosaurs.
[Arlo]
I doubt without that one individual the social layer would have collapsed. It
may have evolved differently, but I don't think any one individual could cause
the demise of society. Think of the logical background to that argument. It
would suppose that NO ONE who died in the American Revolution or Civil Wars (or
any wars) had ANYTHING to contribue to our cultural evolution (since we surely
evolved to where we are without them). Aren't we lucky that all the crucial
individuals we needed were never killed in wars or accidents, and where there
at just the right time to instigate evolution, and that the only people who
were killed were ones we didn't need anyways.
[Platt]
Are you saying that names create existence? That form of Idealism is a new
one on me. If your desert island mother had named you Zog, would you
exist? Or if she had died giving birth leaving you alone without a name,
would you not exist, even if for a short time (hopefully to be adopted by
apes or wolves)?
[Arlo]
Well, the biological patterns that are my biological body would exist. But how
would "Arlo" exist? I can name a rock "Bob", but that won't make it an
intellectual being. But, in order to be an intellectual being (Arlo...
sometimes...) one has to exist in a semiotic frame of reference. One has to
have semiotics to define the "I" and "other", to build references from which
the intellectual level emerges.
You've mentioned how, in your opinion, Pirsig glorifies the individual by
talking about "Lila". Now would be a good to repost what underlies his use of
the name.
"The language we've inherited confuses this. We say 'my' body and 'your' body
and 'his' body and 'her' body, but it isn't that way. That's like a FORTRAN
program saying, 'this is my computer.' 'This body on the left,' and 'this body
on the right.' That's the way to say it. This Cartesian 'Me,' this autonomous
little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in
order to pass judgement on the affairs of the world, is just completely
ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible
fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. This Cartesian 'Me' is a
software reality, not a hardware reality. This body on the left and this body
on the right are running variations of the same program, the same 'Me,' which
doesn't belong to either of them. The 'Me's' are simply a program format."
A quote from Einstein I sent to Ham says the same thing: "A human being is part
of the whole called by us universe , a part limited in time and space. We
experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the
rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of
prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a
few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty... We shall require a substantially new manner of
thinking if mankind is to survive."
And Pirsig from ZMM: "The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that
each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from
reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing
mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common
knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel
that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one
pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is."
"Arlo" is "Arlo" because he became part of a continuing, ongoing mythos... the
huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the
body of man. "Arlo" learned who "Arlo" was through the use of a particular,
non-objective, culturally-derived social semiotic. "Arlo" is the semiotic point
of reference used to refer to what, because of an "optical delusion of
consciousness" is experienced as "separate".
Arlo
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