From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 05 2005 - 22:41:45 GMT
[Platt]
"And beyond that is an even more compelling reason; 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, 13)
[Arlo]
You say this, again, as if my stance denies it. I don't. What you continue
to do is misequate "collective consciousness" with "societies". Pirsig says
of the collective consciousness, "Religion isn't invented by man. Men are
invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these
responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know
something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the
Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you
know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to
what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the
mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is
a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the
collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it."
He also says that mental patterns are derived from social mediation. That
is, the "individual's" thoughts emerge through social mediation, not
independent from it. So that "individual" who can respond to DQ, does so BY
VIRTUE of the collective consciousness.
But, let's break Pirsig's quote you've provided apart. When Pirsig says
"only a living being" can respond to DQ, does he mean cats? Cows? Cells?
Amoebas? Or do you think he means only "people"? If you think he means only
people, would you say that a person left at birth on a deserted island, who
grows up in Glorious Randian Isolation, would be better, worse or
equivalent in ability to respond to DQ than a cat?
I'd argue "equivalent", as both the cat and the deserted island individual
could respond to biological quality, but nothing higher on the MOQ
hierarchy. If humans have some "special gift" to respond to dynamic quality
APART from that which is derived from social mediation, from where does
this ability derive? Genes?
That is, the software program that is running "Platt" comes into being from
social mediation, made possible by collective activity. The collective
creates the individual, who in turn creates the collective. When the
individual appropriates a language, he is in fact containing the collective
within the individual, when the individuals actions are made part of the
social activity of his culture, the collective contains the individual.
Of this software program, Pirsig writes, "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." A program format he equates to an ecology of
patterns, derived from social mediation.
But I'll repeat that last part... "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."
Arlo
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