From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Dec 03 2005 - 03:27:32 GMT
[Platt]
Yes, all by herself, Diana wouldn't have been born. We agree!
[Arlo]
And without the voices of the collective consciousness in her head, she couldn't
think. As Pirsig says, "A human being is a collection of ideas." Ideas which
echo with the collective consciousness of all mankind.
Let me remind you of something else Pirsig says in Lila, something which you've
evidently fallen victim to. "The intellectual level of patterns, in the
historic process of freeing itself from its parent social level, namely the
church, has tended to invent a myth of independence from the social level for
its own benefit. Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the
objective world, never from the social world. The world of objects imposes
itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever."
Notice that last part, a part which ties Pirsig in with the cultural psychology
tradition that emerged from Russia. It is a MYTH, Pirsig says, invented by the
intellect, to profess independence from the social level. It is a MYTH, Pirsig
says, that the world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social
mediation whatsoever.
That "social mediation", that you so deliberatly wish to profess independece
from, something Pirsig rightly sees as the critical link between intellectual
patterns and the world of matter. It was this "social mediation" that enabled
the individual Diana, herself a socially constructed voice, to sing the MD.
[Platt]
Show me where Pirsig describes intellectual patterns as organisms.
[Arlo]
Haven't I answered this repeatedly? (1) Pirsig describes social patterns as
organisms feeding off biological bodies. (2) Pirsig says the intellectual
level's emergence from the social is akin to the social's emergence over the
biological. (3) If Pirsig believes social patterns are organisms (and I agree)
as he says, then I see no reason in extending the metaphor (given the above).
When Pirsig says, "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." I see no reason why he would not say the same thing about
intellectual patterns, which after all, he says are related to social patterns
the same way social patterns are related to biological patterns. This "social
pattern organism" is a metaphor Pirsig uses six times in Lila, by the way.
[Arlo previously]
You're right, it emerges from the collective activity of individuals.
[Platt]
Yes, after someone starts it.
[Arlo]
Yes, as part of the collective activity of the social level, from a someone who
emerges through the collective consciousness, whose thoughts echo the
collective voice of many.
[Platt on intellectual organisms]
When it loses its explanatory power, like when you try to apply it to the
intellectual level, I will gladly distance myself.
[Arlo]
Suit yourself. I go with Pirsig, who said, "One answer is to fudge both mind and
matter and the whole question that goes with them into another platypus called
"man." "Man" has a body (and therefore is not himself a body) and he also has a
mind (and therefore is not himself a mind). But if one asks what is this "man"
(which is not a body and not a mind) one doesn't come up with anything. There
isn't any "man" independent of the patterns. Man is the patterns. This
fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the public," and even
such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our language is so organized around
them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of them.
There is really no need to. Like "substance" they can be used as long as it is
remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not some
independent primary reality of their own."
Furthermore, "Mind is contained in static inorganic patterns. Matter is
contained in static intellectual patterns. Both mind and matter are completely
separate evolutionary levels of static patterns of value, and as such are
capable of each containing the other without contradiction."
All you are doing with your S/O need to ignore the powerful metaphor Pirsig uses
is show how you subordinate everything to your quest to Randify the world.
And I right like that... the individual contains the collective, and the
collective contains the individual, they contain each other without
contradiction. Yessir. I do like that. Now, there's a thought that was socially
constructed, and a good one too.
[Platt]
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..
[Arlo]
At least you admit that calculus did not emerge from one individual, but evolved
over social time as social collective activity.
But you continue to miss the entire point. "Bhaksar", if you will, is not
isolated from the collective consciousness. His activity derives from it, his
identity is part and parcel of it. You continue to act like I denounce the
individual because I don't elevate it to Mount Olympus. I see the role of
"individuals", and I, like Pirsig, see the value in the "individual". But that
value, that "agency" if you will, emerges as biological beings appropriate a
social voice, and as their thoughts echo the ongoing social collective dialogue
that is the collective consciousness.
You say "Liebniz" and "Newton" as if that's somehow proof for your Randian
agenda. But I say, "fine". Liebniz and Newton, who are themselves because of
(not apart from) the social collective. And whose work has value only because
of the ongoing collective consciousness of which it has become a voice in an
ongoing historical dialogue, giving emergence to an intellectual pattern that
is greater than the voice of any Randian individual.
Yes, individuals. And yes, collectives. The inseparable dialectic that is the
software programs in our heads (to use Pirsig's analogy).
[Arlo]
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.
[Platt]
One question: Who wrote "Lila?"
[Arlo]
Pirsig was the keystone species, as I've said. But the thoughts and ideas
contained therein echo the voices of Plato, the Sophists, Kant and James, not
to mention the Chairman, the students of rhetoric in Bozeman, Chris, and
certainly the Sutherlands. It is from all these voices that Lila emerged, with
Pirsig certainly keystone, but without these others voices, Pirsig would have
nothing to say.
But the MOQ is bigger than Lila. Once "given birth to", the MOQ became
immediately social (although it was before as well). It will (and should!)
undergo social evolution (as does calculus), become like Wikipedia a collective
of voices, working together in historical dialectic activity.
Lila's Child, and the PhD work of Ant (both socially constructed latches, owing
to particular keystone species, but not emerging from one lone voice), are part
of the social dialogue that will shape the MOQ over historical time, to grow it
into a voice of the collective, not the voice of one.
Arlo
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