From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Jul 30 2004 - 23:57:40 BST
Hi Johnny,
> >P:
> >Societies don't have minds. Individual humans have minds. Paul's
> >explanation of the relationship between society and minds is excellent.
J:
> Yes, Paul's explanation was good, I agree. I didn't say societies have
> minds, that was my point - minds are second level bio patterns, so how can
> they be fourth level?
Don't you mean brains are bio patterns?
> >P:
> >I don't care what their motives are. Their acts--killing innocent people--
> >are biological. Killing killers is what the social level does, doctors
> >against germs, soldiers against terrorists.
>
> Killing killers is just as biological as killing innocent people, and
> killing innocent people is just as social as killing killers. Now, I agree
> that killing killers is moral and killing innocents is immoral, but they
> are all on the same levels.
If they are all on the same level, why is one moral and the other not?
> >P:
> > > >Pirsig calls the second level biological. What's individual about it?
> >
> >J:
> > > The individuals. You and I are individual bio patterns. My cat is an
> > > individual cat. It is the expected interactions of individual bio
> >patterns
> > > that form the third level. And it is individual instances of inorganic
> > > patterns which interact in expected ways to form the bio level. (But I
> > > didn't call the first level the "individual level" because we were
> >talking
> > > about people. But every level has individual instances of patterns in
> >the
> > > same way. Individual third level patterns are different societies,
> > > individual fourth level patterns are different ideas about society.)
> >
> >P:
> >There are individual electrons at the inorganic level, too. But I'm
> >talking about human beings that make up the social and intellectual
> >levels. Cats need not apply.
>
> I know we are talking about humans, I made that point. But there are
> individual instances of patterns on every level. The individual patterns
> you are talking about - humans - are at the bio level, along with cats.
Pirsig populates the social and intellectual levels exclusively with
people. The individual patterns I'm talking about are people at the
individual level who are dominated by values of their own choosing, not
those chosen for them by society.
> >P:
> > > >How do you define "fourth level patterns?"
> >
> >J:
> > > Expectations ABOUT society that come about through the repeated
> > > interactions of social level patterns. (I reserve the right to refine
> > > that, but that gets the drift)
> >
> >P:
> >Sorry, I don't get it. Where does the mind of a human being come in?
>
> Mind as in consciousness? They participate in repeating moral patterns in
> order to experience the value from expectations beng realized, and they
> experience it through the apex or focus of a human being's brain. Minds
> repeat every pattern, including rocks and democracy.
Do minds ever create new patterns?
P:
> >Anyway, do you really believe your
> >existence depends on someone (a consciousness) observing you?
J:
> Yes, but I don't believe that someone has a choice but to observe me,
> because his observation is secondary to the experience of Quality, and
> Quality orignates his observation. The pattern of me exists in Morality,
> so I will be observed when Moraity creates both the consciousness that
> observes me and the pattern (me) that is being observed.
So when you're alone with no one around you cease to exist?
Platt
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