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

[Platt Holden]

Hi Arlo:

[Arlo]
> 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.

Remember you put DIHI on a desert island without any supporting social 
mediation. So if anybody skipped the social level, I'd say it was you. Of 
course, the whole desert island thing is an unrealistic hypothetical. 
Humans have lived in groups from the beginning, if only a group of mother, 
father and child. All I did was take DIHI as a symbol of someone getting 
an innovative idea and thereby changing society forever, as so many have 
done since the dawn of history. 

[Arlo]
> 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".

Since you insist on repeating your argument again and again, I guess I 
have no choice but to repeat mine. Pirsig wrote about the role of the 
individual: "A tribe can change its values only person by person and 
someone has to be first." (Lila, 9) "Person by person" means individual by 
individual. "Someone" means an individual. Ergo, without innovative 
individuals, the social level would remain static, binding us forever to  
level of some aborigine tribe in the Amazon.

> [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.

Since social patterns "emerged" with the first humans, there's no point to 
your point. 

> [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.

No. I thought we agreed that the ability to create and arrange symbols 
into patterns of meaning  was a  physical attribute of the human brain. 
Isn't that what your friend Tomasello said?  

> 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.
 
Again I ask you to give us a scenario of how the idea of spear arose.

Platt