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

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
This instant messaging Horse has provided is great. We can carry on a more 
realistic "conversation" this way. All that's missing is the beer.

[Arlo]
Good point. To remedy that I am enjoying Magic Hat's Blind Faith IPA. A very
hoppy "microbrew". Nice this time of the year when the land is frozen and
white.

[Platt]
The differences also have to do with the size of the "window" to 
consciousness, yours and mine being larger than my cat's, and much larger 
than an atom's.

[Arlo]
I would agree with this. I, too, do ascribe neurobiological "hardware" as
involved in this. If it were strictly social, for example, we could teach
chimps to manipulate symbols to the depth and degree that humans do. So,
something, some feature of human brains, undergirds the "depth" of the contents
of consciousness.

Tomasello (a favorite author of mine) postulates that an initial genetic trait,
localized in specific neural hardwire, allowed very crude, but effective
"shared attention" behavior. From this "simple" genetic feature, over
social-historical time, emerged greater and more sophisticated symbol usage,
because it allowed for a internal symbolic representation of an external from
the "world of objects", it also allowed social "latching" (Tomasello calls it
"ratcheting"). I'm not purporting Tomasello as "correct", only that I agree
that there must be some basic genetic component of human brains that allows the
functioning we take for granted.

[Platt]
Well, I would say it's partly because of my brain size, partly because of 
social contacts, and partly because of memories of my personal experiences 
that contribute to my greater content of consciousness.

[Arlo]
This is, oddly, a pretty good summation of MY point of view. I just don't
separate "social contacts" from "personal experience", because I believe it is
through social mediation that our personal experience is categorized,
represented, encoded, etc.

Lest I haven't said enough that our "personal experiences" are unique, I'll say
it again. But, I do think that what you "value" (i.e., what gets into that
stored personal experience) is structured by social mediation. That is, the
intellectual knife is guided by a social hand in moving pre-intellectual
experience to symbolically represented intellectual experience. I think this is
what Pirsig was saying when he said that "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."

To restate a point, without the "huge body of common knowledge that unites our
minds as cells are united in the body of man", Platt would be no different than
a caveman.

[Arlo had asked]
Are you suggesting a hierarchy that removes the social pattern layer altogether?

[Platt]
Not at all. I think a person's intellectual patterns arise from 1) her 
brain's innate ability to create symbols and arrange them in patterns of 
meaning, and 2) her unique personal experiences.

[Arlo]
This, above, would seem to indicate a hierarchy that excludes the social layer,
or places the social layer as a irrelevant coincidence to human achievement.
That is to say, given the above, you'd propose that intellectual patterns
emerge in an individual, such as a caveman or that gorgeous DIHI. I'd disagree.

[Platt]
When those experiences include contact with others, they are bound to affect the
intellectual patterns she creates.

[Arlo]
Again, a fundamental disagreement here. Here you posit that the caveman or
modelesque DIHI creates intellectual patterns in the absense of others, whose
only role is after the fact incidental contact.

And again, you appear to removing the social level entirely, saying the from the
inorganic emerged the biological, and from the biological emerged the
intellectual. From individual "intellectuals" interacting, a coincidental
social structure was formed, but that's about it.

[Platt]
I hate to disagree with Helen Keller but most people are not deaf, dumb 
and blind.

[Arlo]
No, but it gets at what the content of one's consciousness is in the absense of
social mediation. According the Keller, there was no thought, no structure,
just an endless cascade of sensory feelings.

[Platt]
I don't doubt for a minute that culture influences people's thoughts. All 
I'm saying is that I have experiences which are uniquely mine as an 
individual that neither you nor anyone else can possible have in exactly 
the same way.

[Arlo]
Well, yes, to this I agree. It's that "duh" truism you spoke of. ;-) But don't
ignore the great amount of shared experiences we both have, including Pirsig's
cross country bike ride and Hudson River adventures. Not to mention Socrates'
lectures, and Rocky beating Apollo Creed.

[Platt]
Like I said, you look at the static trail. I took at the trail blazer that 
creates the trail.

[Arlo]
I don't think it separates like this. The "unique proprietary experience of the
individual" is as static as the shared collective "calculus". As to the
individual being the dynamo (as it were), we both agree. I think we disagree on
where this "agency to respond to DQ" comes from.

In your opinion, it derives from biology, with social contact being incidental
or irrelevant. In my opinion, it derives from social mediation. Pirsig's too.

[Platt]
Are we getting anywhere, I just having fun -- not that there's anything 
wrong with that. :-)

[Arlo]
I'm having fun too. Who knows if we're getting anywhere. If we're having fun,
isn't that all that matters. :-)

Arlo