[MD] Platt and Arlo

[Arlo Bensinger]

[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