From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Dec 01 2005 - 15:16:17 GMT
> [Arlo]
> You made a categorical claim that inorganic "innovation" is no longer
> occruing. I simply pointed out that this is likely false. As to whether
> evolution is occuring on a planet billions of lightyears to here in
> parallel to our own, I would consider to be possible, but improbable. On
> the lower levels, evolution may indeed show more parallel, but on the upper
> levels, I'd say that the changes are likely enormous. But, its all
> supposition.
All you have to do to prove my claim false is to show where inorganic
innovation is occurring. If you think I'm wrong, it shouldn't be too hard
to find evidence to the contrary.
> [Arlo]
> You're losing me. Why couldn't a train run with just the engine?
Definition of a train from Merriam Webster: A connected line of railroad
cars with our without an engine.
> [Platt]
> So a train responds to DQ? That's a new one on me. I suppose your lawn
> mower does, too.
>
> [Arlo]
> Stay focused, Platt. It was an analogy, speaking of "trains" in the
> abstract.
You do jump around, don't you?
> [Platt]
> Danielle Steele makes no claim to authoring a philosophy. What Wikipedia
> says about Rand's acceptance by left-wing university philosophy departments
> could as well be said about Pirsig. So, are we to conclude that Pirsig's
> work "just ain't no good?"
>
> [Arlo]
> To be honest, if in 50 years it is as ignored as Rand, then, yes, Platt,
> I'd say the MOQ failed to develop anything worthwhile. Although I know
> there is a need there to "blame" some vast "liberal conspiracy" for why
> your (and Rand's) ideas are ignored at the Academy, but many ideas fail in
> the Academy, and your "left-right" dichotomy is not the scale. James and
> Peirce are taught everywhere and held in high esteem, are they part of
> "liberalism"? We read Kant, and Plato and Sarte and Wittgenstein. Not to
> mention Saussere, Searle, Nietzsche and Aquinas. I've had philosophy
> courses where we read Jefferson, Locke and Mill. All these all part of the
> "vast liberal conspiracy in the curriculum"? No. Just people with much
> better ideas, ideas worth reading and voices worth appropriating.
Do you deny that the educational establishment is largely made up of
liberals who vote democratic? That's why they don't let the light of Rand
into the classroom. She supports the liberal's anathema -- capitalism.
> [Arlo]
> Nice addition, "magically", as if I said that. You believe, then, that
> "Platt" existed billions of years ago, that human bodies existed before
> cells collectively formed them? What about your "consciousness", Platt?
> Where did that come from? Was it there "since the beginning, waiting to
> flower"? How, praytell, in Plattland, does the human body emerge from
> collective cell activity? Or, if it doesn't emerge from this, where does it
> come from?
Consciousness, awareness, Quality, experience -- all names for the same
phenomena -- was there from the beginning. From that beginning, all came
into being including you and me and the man over there behind the tree.
> [Arlo]
> Again, use "commune" all you like. Its a valient rhetorical slant, but all
> it does is show that you don't understand Pirsig. Pirsig is very clear in
> this quote, social level patterns are a higher level organism than
> biological level organisms (people) on whose collective activity they
> emerge, but are higher, and use biological beings to further their own
> goals. The intellectual level emerges from the social level in the same
> way.
Pray tell, why do all these things emerge? I know my answer. I wonder
what's yours?
> And however much you find it necessary to cast me in abject opposition to
> your grand ol' individualism by brandishing me a collectivist with no
> regard for the individual, I'll add again, that yes, Pirsig did create this
> metaphor, but only through the collective consciousness, through the
> language and historical dialogue that he appropriate, through the many
> conversations he had with friends, peers, historical personages, students
> and riding companions. Pirsig, again, could be the "keystone species" of
> what we consider to be "that idea", but it was formed, developed, nurtured
> and constructed socially.
Well now we have two "keystone species," Dan and Bob. Any more out there?
And where did you ever get that tag from anyhow? Is that an Arlo original?
> How do you know, for example, that, say, someone he met at a bar one night
> didn't suggest a somewhat similar metaphor. He thought about it, tightened
> it up, and bounced it off his wife, who suggested something different. One
> night, over dinner with friends, the four of them sat around and talked
> about this idea for this metaphor, each contributing ideas until something
> stronger emerged. During a proofread, an editor suggested using "Giant"
> instead of "Collosus" (imagining that that was the word used it the draft).
> Pirsig likes it, and okays it for the final version. Doesn't that sound
> even remotely to you like the way the real world is? Pirsig, keystone
> species, but idea socially constructed.
Doesn't sound like the world I live in. I didn't bounce this post off
anyone before sending it into cyberspace.
> Even if you hold the mythical idea that Pirsig's thought magically appeared
> in his brain without any social dialogue in the present, the voices in his
> head are a social dialogue that is the historical dialectic, the
> "collective consciousness of all communicating mankind". To be sure, this
> dialogue contains his "unique propriatary experience", given voice through
> the saliences and structures of the collective consciousness. And that is
> the "majesty" that is the "individual-collective" on the social level, the
> force that gives rise to emergence.
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. You admit to "unique proprietary
experience." You almost sound like Ham.
.
[Arlo]
> As for my use of "organism" to be strange. Well, Pirsig calles social
> patterns "organisms", saying, "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." And also, "When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as
> inventions of "man" but as higher organisms than biological man, the
> phenomena of war and genocide and all the other forms of human exploitation
> become more intelligible... But the superorganism, the Giant, who is a
> pattern of values superimposed on top of biological human bodies, doesn't
> mind losing a few bodies to protect his greater interests."
>
> Although Pirsig did not use this term to describe intellectual patterns, I
> don't think its a stretch. He says, " 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."
>
> In other words, the relationship between intellect and society is analogous
> to the one between society and biology. If social level patterns can be
> seen as "organisms" that emerge from collective biological activity (and I
> agree with Pirsig that they can), then I hold that intellectual patterns
> can also be seen as "organisms" that emerge from collective social
> activity.
> Perhps you can show me where Pirsig disputes this?
"In the MOQ all organisms are objective. They exist in the material world.
All societies are subjective. They exist in the mental world." (Lila's
Child)
> PS: "On Top of Old Smokey"?! Jeez, man, well, at least you didn't say "Oh,
> Suzanna"!
I play that one, too, along with "De Camptown Races" --doo dah, doo dah.
Platt
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