[MD] MD 4th level - The more autonomus level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
But note, just because it is "social" does not mean the "individual" is not 
part of it. You need the voices of others in your head in order to "think", 
and to categorize and symbolically represent experience, but in that is 
also what emerges as "your voice", owing to the unique microgenetic 
experiences of your particular existence.

[Platt]
If we needed the voices of others in our heads in order to "think," how did 
the first thought arise? Give us the scenario of how you think thought began.

[Arlo]
Fair enough. While I attempt that, perhaps you can tell me how the thoughts 
in the head of a DIHI (deserted island human individual) would exist, on a 
greater level than your cat. Are you siding with Ham that the part of you 
that "thinks" (consciousness) is bestowed on us- as special creations- by 
Divine Source so that we may honor said Divine Source? Are you suggesting 
that "thinking" originates out of human DNA?

To begin with, let's take that DIHI (deserted island human individual), as 
the question could easily be, in a DIHI what type of "thought" does s/he have?

She would have, as Ham calls it, "organic sensibility" to be sure. She 
would be able to respond to low and high biological quality. She would be 
able to register pattern recognition to a certain degree, and act on 
external patterns in immediate moments of existence.

But would she have "thoughts" in her head? Would she be able to 
symbolically represent her experience, and then reflect on these 
representations? My answer is "no". The structure of symbolic 
representations, containing saliences that direct attention to particular 
symbols and signs, is appropriated only via social, dialogic interactions. 
Perhaps you can answer how without these she can think, and what in fact 
she would be capable of thinking?

But, given the (what appears to be) unique genetic hardwiring of the human 
neural system, this "individual", if rescued and set into a social milieu, 
could indeed appropriate its socially constructed "collective 
consciousness", giving her the ability to symbolically represent her own 
experience (through the cultural grid), and also the ability to participate 
in a historical dialogue of voices that gives her the shared symbolic 
experiences of the entire collective. As part of this, she would learn to 
define her own locus of experience as "Diana" and recognize the biological 
individual behind the tree as "Arlo" (not just "self" and "not self", but 
(1) an intellectual (symbolic) categorization of all things "not self", and 
(2) a recognition via dialogue that there are other "selves", not just "me" 
as the sole "self").

But although this is social custom to think of "Arlo" and "Diana" as 
separate social as well as biological patterns, the shared experiences of 
culture, appropriated as the individual gains the ability to manipulate 
symbols make their consciousnesses much more similar than dissimilar.

Now, this means that human consciousness evolved over historical time. "We" 
are much more "conscious" (or have a greater conscious awareness) than our 
prehistoric ancestors. Do you concur? And the reason for this greater 
consciousness is not genetic, but it due to an emergent social level that 
(1) latches and (2) symbolically represents experience so that one's 
thoughts are not simply "organic sensibilities".

Also, of course, I'm not saying that 21st century consciousness is 
drastically greater than 18th century consciousness, the same way I say 
modern consciousness is greater than prehistoric consciousness. But since 
the social, collective consciousness grows, or as Pirsig says, the mythos 
grows, in historical time by the accumulation of analogue upon analogue, 
and since these analogues fill the... well, let me just end with Pirsig 
saying it himself....

"The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born 
as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the 
Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, 
transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge 
that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that 
one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one 
pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is."

Arlo