From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jul 13 2004 - 09:30:17 BST
Hi Platt
Platt said:
> Ideally, all the activities you describe (using logic, fitting to
> empirical data, making economical statements, identifying "elegance")
are
> done independently of social level values. A high value at the
> intellectual level is "objectivity, that is, freedom from society's
> influence. By contrast, groups, almost by definition, never act
> independently of others.
Paul:
The thing with "independently of social values" as a definition is that
it would include the inorganic and biological levels as well. It is
*part of* a definition but not enough. It would be like defining the
biological level as the level that is independent of inorganic values.
"Objectivity" comes closer but seems to undermine the effort to move
away from the idea that knowledge can be objective. In the MOQ,
"objective" is not used in an epistemic sense.
The other thing which troubles me is that intellectual patterns, on the
whole, are not really individual at all - if they were it just wouldn't
work. If I develop my own unique and individual mathematical notation,
or decide that today I think it is better to work from a 400 degree
circle, how much progress would I make? There are Kuhnian paradigm
shifts from time to time, but if they are to latch they eventually
become accepted by the wider scientific community and ultimately become
part of the cultural "common sense."
Also, intellectual truths and principles are often far from individual -
intellectual laws are written in the abstract, they generally don't name
or apply to this person or that person, they are written in general
terms. As Pirsig says, the intellectual level is "the skilled
manipulation of abstract symbols that have no corresponding particular
experience.." [Pirsig, Letter to Paul T, Sept 2003]
Paul previously said:
> > Why would philosophy, mathematics, theology, geometry etc. be
defined as
> > "individual patterns" instead of "intellectual patterns"?
Platt said:
> Because they were all once created by individuals responding to DQ.
As
> Pirsig said, "A tribe can change its values only person by person and
> someone has to be first." The patterns you cite are also dealt with
person
> by person, Pirsig being a fine example in the philosophy category.
Paul:
Again, I think this definition is no definition at all. From the
biological level up, there are things done person by person. In the
Copleston annotations, Pirsig says this of "an individual":
"The individual man is primarily a biological organism."
However, there is something which I think can bring us closer to
agreement. You talk above of individuals "responding to DQ." This is
where I would ascribe a notion of *individuality* to. This does not mean
that Dynamic Quality is *an individual* - what it means is that activity
that is unique, new, evolutionary, free and not guided by static
patterns of any kind, is Dynamic Quality. Consider this statement from
Pirsig, again from the Copleston annotations:
"The MOQ, like the Buddhists and the Determinists (odd bedfellows) says
this "autonomous individual" is an illusion."
Static patterns cannot be autonomous, and an individual is static
patterns. An individual is the static patterns left in the wake of an
ongoing process of experience, but individuality may be said to come
from the cutting edge of the process itself.
In Lila, Pirsig talks about the immorality of the death penalty:
"Societies and thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets
of static patterns. These patterns can't by themselves perceive or
adjust to Dynamic Quality. Only a living being can do that." [Lila
Ch.13]
I think a living being is part of the *process* which enables static
patterns to change - and that is where I think your "individuality"
lies, not in any one level.
Cheers
Paul
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