From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 02 2005 - 13:25:58 BST
Hi Scott,
[You wrote]
I would also say that Arlo's "symbiotic-dialectic between the "individual" and
the "collective" [that] does not place precedence of one over the other" is not
MOQian either.
[Arlo]
Not phrased like this, no. The MOQs view is emergentist, that is that
intellectual patterns (of which "I" is one) emerge out of the social level.
They take moral precedence, meaning that an intellectual pattern ("I", E=MC^2,
the MOQ) are at a higher moral level than historical social codes (patterns
such as "promiscuous sex is bad"- LILA "The question of whether promiscuity is
moral had been resolved from prehistoric times to the end of the Victorian
era... That may have been why Rigel was so angry back in Kingston... a
biological pattern of quality and sex, had destroyed a social pattern of
quality, a family and a job").
[You wrote]
Surely, when we have disagreements we are acknowledging the individual as taking
precedence over the collective insofar as we don't sic the cops on those we
disagree with.
[Arlo]
Not sure what you mean by this. Did my post sound like I was calling 911?
[You wrote]
However much our thoughts bubble up within a social milieu, need validation by
peers, etc., they are nevertheless thoughts of an individual. What else has
thoughts? The whole point of strengthening intellect is to make one's own
thoughts more autonomous.
[Arlo]
What is "an individual", Scott? Show me one. If you show me the physical body of
what we call "man", you are showing me biological level patterns. If you take a
hypothetical "man" that is left as an infant on a deserted island, and survives
to adulthood, tell me, where is he as "an individual"? Does this "man" have an
"I"? I answer "no".
The "YOU" that is "YOU" can only exist via your assimilation of a social
symbolic. That is, through a social semiotic system primary, direct experience
is filtered and symbolically represented and stored. This accumulation of
symbolically represented experience (SRE) includes a symbolic locus, what we
call the "I", to order this experience.
From LILA: "The language of mental intelligence has nothing to say to the cells
directly. They don't understand it. The language of the cells has nothing to
say to the mind directly. It doesn't speak that language either. They are
completely separate patterns. At this moment, asleep, "Lila" doesn't exist any
more than a program exists when a computer is switched off. The intelligence of
her cells had switched Lila off for the night, exactly the way a hardware
switch turns off a computer program. The language we've inherited confuses
this. We say "my" body and "your" body and "his" body and "her" body, but it
isn't that way. That's like a FORTRAN program saying, "this is my computer."
"this body on the left," and "This body on the right." That's the way to say
it. This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our
eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of
the world, is just completely ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of
reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines
it. This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This
body on the left and this body on the right are running variations of the same
program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to either of them. The "Me's" are
simply a program format. Talk about aliens from another planet. This program
based on "Me's" and "We's" is the alien. "We" has only been here for a few
thousand years or so. But these bodies that "We" has taken over were around for
ten times that long before "We" came along. And the cells-my God, the cells
have been around for thousands of times that long."
Thus, according to Pirsig, the "I" is an intellectual pattern. "Individuals" (as
Ham and Platt use the word) do not "have" intellect. Individuals are an
intellectual pattern. Arlo is an intellectual pattern that provides a locus to
SRE.
Because of our SRE, we are not only capable of experiencing DQ, but we are
capable of "remediating our experience", that is we are able to share these
experiences with others (and temporally with ourselves) who experience them
symbolically. As we remediate our SRE back into the "social milieu", we provide
the ability of evolution for the intellectual level (just as when we have sex
we provide the ability of evolution for the biological level).
As such, the "I" provides potential evolutionary value for the Intellectual
Level. From LILA: "[S]ocieties 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. The strongest
moral argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's
Dynamic capability-its capability for change and evolution."
But Pirsig also states: "He also used to wonder if there was a higher farmer
that did the same thing to people, a different kind of organism that they saw
every day and thought of as beneficial, providing food and shelter and
protection from enemies, but an organism that secretly was raising these people
for its own sustenance, feeding upon them and using their accumulated energy
for its own independent purposes. 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."
This describes the social-biological, but such a statement could easily be made
about the intellectual-social. To state: The intellectual level is a higher
organism feeding upon a lower one (social) and accomplishing more by doing so
than the lower organism can accomplish alone.
More LILA: "In a value metaphysics, on the other hand, society and intellect are
patterns of value. They're real. They're independent. They're not properties of
"man" any more than cats are the property of catfood or a tree is a property of
soil. Biological man does not create his society any more than soil "creates" a
tree. The pattern of the tree is dependent upon the minerals in the soil and
would die without them, but the tree's pattern is not created by the soil's
chemical pattern. It is hostile to the soil's chemical pattern. It "exploits"
the soil, "devours" the soil for its own purposes, just as the cat devours the
catfood for its own purposes. 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. A value metaphysics makes it possible to see that there's a
conflict between intellect and society that's just as fierce as the conflict
between society and biology or the conflict between biology and death."
Just as society manipulates biological individuals to achieve its own goals, so
too does intellect manipulate social patterns to achieve its own goals. The "I"
is part of that manipulation.
But maybe I just need more coffee...
Arlo
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