From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 02 2005 - 21:13:01 BST
Platt,
[You wrote]
Show me a social pattern that is capable of "reasoning."
[Arlo]
Show me an "individual". Show me "Arlo" or "Platt", apart from the
statically-latched, semiotically represented experience that "Arlo" or "Platt"
serves as an intellectual semiotic reference point.
Your biological body? That's only capable of responding to biological quality.
[You wrote]
Only individuals like you and I can think and reason -- as this and every other
individual post on this site proves every day. The collective, social pattern
called the MD doesn't create intellectual patterns, only its individual
members do, just as the individual named Robert Pirsig created the MOQ.
[Arlo]
Semiotically referenced experiences, with a intellectual referent point ("I")
allows biological beings with a socially-appropriated language system to
remediate experience. Just as the social layer is "an organism" that uses
biological beings for its own purposes, so too does the intellectual level use
socially-mediated beings for its own purposes. This is straight from Pirsig.
Your "individual who can reason" is serving this greater organism. Again.
Pirsig.
[You wrote]
Individuals are collections of patterns. I agree. That says nothing about
the source of intellectual patterns, of new ideas.
[Arlo]
The source of intellectual patterns is the social layer. That's right from the
MOQ hierarchy, Platt. Inorganic evolves into biological, which evolves into
social, which evolves into intellectual. Social patterns are the foundation out
of which intellectual patterns emerge. As stated clearly in LILA.
"Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of
society, which originates out of biology which originates out of inorganic
nature."
[You wrote]
The patterns of language are social in nature. But the manipulation of
those patterns that produces new ideas is strictly individual.
[Arlo]
Not according to Pirsig. Since you seem to avoid Pirsig's words, I'll reprint
them: "In a value metaphysics, on the other hand, society and intellect are
patterns of value. They're real. They're independent. They're not properties of
"man" any more than cats are the property of catfood or a tree is a property of
soil.
Let that sink in, Platt. Intellectual patterns are not properties of "man"
anymore than a tree is the property of soil. They're real. They're independent.
Pirsig continues: "In this manner biological man is exploited and devoured by
social patterns that are essentially hostile to his biological values. This is
also true of intellect and society. Intellect has its own patterns and goals
that are as independent of society as society is independent of biology.
The intellectual level manipulates the social level for its own goals, just as
the social level manipulates biology for its own goals.
[Platt quoting Pirsig]
"Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A
human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence
over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of
evolution than social patterns of value." (Lila, 13)
[Arlo]
When have I denied this? The value of the individual lies her/his appropriation
of semotically represented experience and remediation of those experiences back
into the intellectual level. That we serve the intellectual level, or rather,
that our biological bodies serve the social level, it is no surprise to me that
our social minds serve the intellectual level. Our "value" is in our
contribution to the Intellectual level, not our supremacy or containment of it.
More LILA: " The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of
freeing itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to
invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit.
Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never
from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with
no social mediation whatsoever."
[Platt]
Right. Not the collective, the individual--celebrated by Pirsig in the
very title of "Lila" and all the other colorful individual characters in
his book, from Dusenberry to the "good dog."
[Arlo]
Mai oui. As Pirsig says, the "Me's" are useful intellectual constructs. The
important thing is to never forget that's just what they are. Two quotes from
LILA show this perfectly clearly.
LILA: This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our
eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment 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.
LILA: This fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the
public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our language is so
organized around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get
rid of them. There is really no need to. Like "substance" they can be used as
long as it is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not
some independent primary reality of their own.
You can use your "I" and "me" all you want, but Pirsig is clear about what they
are.
Arlo
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