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

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Hi Platt,

What you continue to argue for is not simply a rewording of "intellectual" to
"individual" in the MOQ, but a removal of the "social" altogether. You've
denied this, but given what you say below, I'm not sure your denial makes
sense.

What you are proposing (I'll get to the email in a second) is a hierarchy of
inorganic->biological->intellectual, or what seems more exact given your most
recent response: inorganic->biological->individual->intellectual.

[Platt]
after looking at the plant the seeds came from that she found so delicious,
suddenly in a flash of creative understanding, realized that the plant grew
from the seeds, and that if she planted the seeds as well as ate them, she
would have a plentiful supply of seeds in the future

[Arlo]
Here you have "intellectual" patterns emerging directly from either (1)
biological level patterns (neurobiology), or (2) some "individual
consciousness" which bridges the biological and intellectual level.

You've claimed, in fact, that when Pirsig is talking about "the intellectual
emerging from the social" that "he is speaking in generalities". Meaning, that
intellect emerges from the individual, and "social" is just a convenient way to
speak about this process occuring en masse.

You deny Pirsig's direct claim that "social mediation" is the bridge between
"intellect" and "biology", even though he says this clearly and outright (more
on this in a bit), and use the word "individual" differently among your posts
to refer to either "the individual being a higher moral level than social
patterns" or "the individual as the brigde between biology and intellect".

In short, "social patterns" play no role in the formation of intellect, which
emerges directly from individuals experiencing "the world of objects", as your
claim about the DIHI above demonstrates. When "individuals come together", your
comments go, "there is a cultural effect on intellectual patterns", but those
intellectual patterns are nor derivative of social patterns, they are
derivative of individuals experiencing with or without being immersed in social
patterns.

Now, this is of course a Randian revision of the MOQ, but it is not Pirsig.
Pirsig, I'm sure, says what he means, and he says quite clearly that
"intellect" derives from "social mediation", and that it has invented a myth of
independance from the social level. "Science and reason, this myth goes, come
only from the objective world, never from the social world."

I think the reason for your unacceptance of Pirsig's words, is that your want to
"place" the "individual" somewhere IN the MOQ, or perhaps on top of the MOQ.
But the "individual" exists on all the level of the MOQ, on the inorganic level
as the atoms that make up my body, on the biological level as the blood and
muscle tissue and brain mass, on the social level as interacting, dialogic
"software realities" (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) and on the intellectual
level as "sources of thought". The DIHI would stop at the capabilities held in
her biology, she would never develop a software program of "me". Pirsig
describe humans as "collections of ideas", "ideas" that originate and derive
from "social mediation".

[Arlo previously]
{humans) never even modified tools, instead used whatever preformed object they
happened to pick up.

[Platt] 
Now I think you're talking about chimps, not humans.

[Arlo]
No, the fossil record clearly shows that tool modification follows the emergence
of social patterns, it does not predate it.

[Platt]
It's evident to me that agriculture began with one individual having an 
idea. Similarly, fire, the wheel, the spear, the bow and arrow, etc., etc.
Others copied and built on the original idea.

[Arlo]
Now you're running circles. Of course, I've never denied what you say above. But
the "agency" by which that "individual" was able to have such an idea derives,
as Pirsig says, from "social mediation". It does not come directly from an
individual interacting with the "world of objects". So, that individual who
thought to make a spear, did so because of "social mediation", that gives him
(or her) the ability to think symbollically.

So, again, its not that a "commune" of people invented the spear, but that by
virtue of social mediation an individual is given the agency (potential, power,
capability, ?) to have such thoughts to do so.

Arlo