From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Dec 02 2005 - 22:18:11 GMT
> [Platt]
> Speculative. But, someone had to be first regardless of the scenario you
> dream up. It wasn't one of your communes that started the MD. It was an
> individual named Diana.
>
> [Arlo]
> Communes again, eh? What you continue to miss is that Diana is (as are we
> all) a "commune" of voices. And her activity in creating the MD involved
> not only the "collective dialogue" of her consciousness, but the social
> collaboration of others. All be herself, Diana could have done nothing, not
> even "think".
Yes, all by herself, Diana wouldn't have been born. We agree!
> [Platt]
> As pointed out in another post, the idea of intellectual "organisms" is
> solely a creation of Arlo's fervid imagination.
>
> [Arlo]
> It is a metaphor Pirsig himself uses to describe emergent social patterns.
> If social level patterns can be thought of as "organisms", as Pirsig
> rightly believes, so can intellectual patterns. Indeed, according to the
> MOQ it describes perfectly the way one layer (1) emerges from the
> collective activity underneath it, and (2) is at a higher level of
> evolution.
Show me where Pirsig describes intellectual patterns as organisms.
> [Platt]
> A choir doesn't form itself. Someone had to initiate it, start it up, get
> it going, audition applicants, choose a choirmaster, etc., etc. Choirs
> don't magically emerge in the chancel while the congregation watches
> awe-struck at the miracle.
>
> [Arlo]
> You're right, it emerges from the collective activity of individuals.
Yes, after someone starts it.
> [Platt]
> You seem fascinated by biological metaphors. I wonder what their attraction
> is for you?
>
> [Arlo]
> It's a powerful analogy to "what we know". Pirisig uses it, and I think it
> makes sense to. If you want to distance yourself from Pirsig's use of this
> metaphor, please feel free to do so.
When it loses its explanatory power, like when you try to apply it to the
intellectual level, I will gladly distance myself.
> [Platt]
> Be that as it may, the MOQ did not emerge from "all these voices" but from
> one voice, that of Robert Pirsig. Nor is it a biological organism. It's a
> metaphysics.
> [Arlo]
> More Randian nonsense. The MOQ is a dialogic creation containing the
> historical and contemporary voices of many, without which there would be no
> MOQ. Pirsig is indeed the keystone species in its creation, but it is
> hardly the voice of him alone. But let's back away from the MOQ for now
> (because it is a "young organism") and consider an organism that's
> undergone significant social construction, "calculus". From which one voice
> did "calculus" emerge? Which "one mind" created it?
Neither the MOQ nor calculus are organisms. As for modern calculus,
according to Wikipedia it began with Liebniz and Newton, two identifiable
individuals. Others played a part both before and after, but the fact that
they are named (Archimedes, Bhaskar, Cauchy, etc.) highlights the role of
individuals, not nameless communes.. .
> Even if one accepts the simplistically distorted Randian perspective that
> it "emerged from one voice", that first lone voice is still only the first
> sentence of a historical dialogue that will collectively shape and evolve
> the MOQ over time. As such, it will emerge (as it already has) into
> something more than some pathologically simplistic "voice of one" into a
> higher level organism. And, if you hate Pirsig's biological metaphor, then
> say a "higher level pattern" than the voice of any "one" lone imaginary
> Randian speaker.
>
> But, be that as it may, the MOQ is the voice of more than one today.
> Without the collective voices of our consciousness, there would be no MOQ.
> Without James, and Plato and Chris and the Chairman, and Dusenberry and the
> students of rhetoric in Montana, and all these other voices that make up
> the dialogue "in Pirsig's head", there would be no MOQ. That Pirsig's
> "unique proprietary experience" (itself shaped by the collective
> consiousness) was keystone in its inception is of no doubt. But is it his
> voice alone? Utter Randian bunk.
One question: Who wrote "Lila?"
Platt
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