From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 29 2005 - 16:13:11 GMT
[Platt]
You use the present tense -- innovation OCCURING at all levels. Perhaps
you could show some evidence that innovation is still occuring at the
inorganic and biological levels. In my book, evolution at those levels
ended a long, long time ago. But, if you can show the appearance of a new
species since homo sapiens, I'll take my position under advisement.
[Arlo]
Gee, I dunno. What evidence do you have that inorganic "innovation" is not
occuring somewhere in the universe? Unless you think the "earth" is the sole
recipient of Quality's attention in the universe, I think it stands to reason
that "if it happened here, it could be happening somewhere else".
[Platt]
A train consists of a locomotive and cars. Take away either and you no
longer have a train. But, what drives the train? The cars?
[Arlo]
Bad, bad analogy, Platt. The train can function without cars. How about this, a
moving train relies on a track, an engine, people to operate the controls,
people to keep the track free of debris and safe, and planners to make sure two
trains don't collide. Which "drives" the train? All of them. Or, in the MOQ,
none of them, what drives the train is DQ that drives the collective activity
of running the train in particular ways and directions.
[Platt]
What's been relegated to the dustbin of history is Marxist communism.
Rand's books still sell in the millions, and capitalism is on the rise
everywhere.
[Arlo]
From Wikipedia, "Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism have been subject to
various criticisms. In the realm of analytic philosophy, however, it is more
accurate to say that Rand's work has been mostly ignored. University
departments considered leaders in the field of analytic philosophy pay scant
attention to her work. For example, a study of well-regarded departments in
both the analytic and Continental philosophy traditions[9], produced by Brian
Leiter, reveals not one department that considers an acquaintance with Rand's
work a prerequisite for the Ph.D. "
Although it begrudges that some people in the academy are discussing her work,
it remains pretty clear that after nearly 50 years of publication no one takes
her work seriously outside of a few conservative "thinktanks". Of course, I
know you need to blame this on some vast "liberal conspiracy", but I prefer
Occam's Razor. "It just ain't no good". As for "selling millions", so does
Danielle Steele, and yet I'd hardly derive from this her status as a adequate
philosopher.
[Arlo previously]
Look in the mirror. Your physical body is a cell collective.
[Platt]
Gee, I don't see any cells.
[Arlo]
Because their collective has emerged as a greater organism, one that we
conveniently think of as an "individual body", but is really the collective
activity of millions of cells, giving rise to something greater than
themselves. Do you deny this?
[Arlo previously]
Look outside your window, that city is a collective organism formed by
"individual" biological bodies.
[Platt]
Gee, I don't see any organism.
[Arlo]
Pirsig did. He writes, "Later he saw there was: this Giant. People look upon the
social patterns of the Giant in the same way cows and horses look upon a
farmer; different from themselves, incomprehensible, but benevolent and
appealing. Yet the social pattern of the city devours their lives for its own
purposes just as surely as farmers devour the flesh of farm animals. A higher
organism is feeding upon a lower one and accomplishing more by doing so than
the lower organism can accomplish alone."
[Arlo previously]
Pick up a book on Physics. The knowledge therein is a collective emergent from
the actions of social individuals. You see them, but that Randian nonsense
keeps you from "seeing them".
[Platt]
Gee. I look in a book I see black marks on a white background. I don't see
any "knowledge."
[Arlo]
That's all you'd see if you didn't have a social language with which to
interpret, here, and appropriate the voices of others.
[Platt]
Eyes see parts. Thinking creates abstract collectives. What you learn in
Semantics 101 is that words are not same as things, that the puff of wind
that sounds like "milk" won't feed the baby.
[Arlo]
And what is "thinking", Platt? It is a dialogic interaction with the historical
voices of the collective consciousness. You "think" through this, Platt, no in
opposition or Randian "isolation" from it.
[Arlo previously]
Your physical body is not just a "collection of bone and tissue", but from
the collective activity of individual cells, a "higher organism" emerges.
On the cellular level, a virus is no more moral than DNA. But, the emergent
human body is a higher organism than any individual cell.
Who you are emerged from your appropriation of the collective consciousness of
20th century America. Your thoughts echo with the voices of who you've read
(historical dialogue), people you've talked with, movies, music and other
cultural dialogues. As you conceptualize your "unique proprietary experience",
you do so through the structure of the collective consciousness, to which your
words play back into and become a part of. From these individual activities
within the field of the collective consiousnes, emerges "higher level
organisms", such as Quantum Physics, the MOQ, calculus, and so on.
[Platt]
Lots of spooky "emerging" goin' on out der. :-) "It was a dark and stormy
night. Suddenly there was a scream."
[Arlo]
Brilliant, Platt. You prefer the notion that "Physics" was out there in space,
billions of years ago, before time, before mass, just waiting for things to
"flower" so that it could "apply to something"? Thankfully, Pirsig dismissed
such foolishness early in his first book.
But tell me, where was (let's say) "Calculus" four billion years ago? Was it
hanging out somewhere waiting for the levels to "flower" (as you called it)?
[Arlo]
To quote Rob Base and DJ Jazzy Jeff, "It takes two."
[Platt]
Who dat?
[Arlo]
See, if you knew this, you'd be more fun at parties. ;-)
Arlo
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