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

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Good Day, Platt,

In reply to my assertion that your ideas replace the MOQ hierarchy with a
hierarchy going: inorganic->biological->individual->intellectual, you replied:

[Platt]
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.

[Arlo]
The whole point of doing so was to demonstrate my claim (and Pirsig's) that
"intellect" derives from "social mediation". In the absense of said social
mediation, as with a DIHI, there would be no possibility for the formation of
intellectual patterns (beyond what is afforded by the "organic sensibility" of
human biology).

You deny this, claiming that a DIHI would develop intellectual patterns of
thought based solely on her experience with "the world of objects". This claim
stands counter to the MOQ, and Pirsig, which states that intellectual patterns
require social mediation (or emerge from social patterns).

[Platt]
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]
Well, here you appear to make an intriguing definition. The archeological record
(consulting my Columbia History of the World) indicates that as the fossil
record of bones between "ape" and "man" blurs as one descends into remote
prehistory. Most scholars, it claims, accept the emergence of the first
proto-humans based NOT on fossilized bones (which are indistinguishable from
ape in the same era) but on the co-occurance of bones alongside "modified
tools". Indeed, these also tend to reveal a social existence of more than just
mate-child, but of "tribal" orientations.

The interesting point is "man" is defined in prehistory not by genetic or
skeletal differences from the "ape" of the time, but by the association of an
otherewise indistinguishable biological creatures with modified tools, which
also co-occur with evidence of tribal (social) existence.

In short, "man" is defined in the archeological record by the use of tools
coinciding with social pattern emergence. There is NO evidence in the fossil
record of modified tool use co-occuring with biological individuals NOT living
in some social arrangement.

This supports Pirsig's notion that intellect derives via social mediation, and
not from "the world of objects". 

[Platt]
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]
The trouble is, I don't dispute what you say. I simply think you are seeing only
one side of the coin. The "individual" who is first, as I've said, derives
her/his agency to act on the social-intellectual levels from the collective
consciousness. A human individual in isoloation, whether a DIHI or Tomasello's
feral child, who only be able to act in accordance with the agency afforded by
his/her biological patterns.

Thus the value is not in the "individual", nor is it in the "collective
consciousness", but it the mergence of the two, without which the "individual"
is capable only of biologically afforded action, and the "collective
consciousness" would not exist.

>From this merging (or "appropriation", or even Pirsig's "mediation") is where
the biological pattern we call "Edison" was able to "invent". Not in isolation
from others, but because of others.


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

[Arlo]
This is an argument by redefinition. Not that I disagree, if you're saying that
"humans" are human by virtue of "social patterns", I'd agree. The question is,
do you believe humans ever existed asocially, or pre-socially?

[Arlo previously]
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.

[Platt]
No.

[Arlo]
According to Pirsig, yes.

[Platt]
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?

[Arlo]
I do agree to this, but I think the level of manipulation supported by
biological attributes (the Neanderthal we'd all revert to without the
collective consciousness, or Mythos) is very crude. When we look at Neanderthal
man in the archeologic record, for example, we see some evidence of symbol
manipulation, but nothing near as complex as modern cognition. This is an
intriguing subject to me, though, and what draws me to Tomasello is his
similarity to Pirsig. More on this later... 

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

[Arlo]
My overall answer is that when the potential for its creation emerged within the
affordances provided by a given culture, it was an individual who appropriated
the Mythos or collective consciousness of that culture, at that moment in the
historical dialogue, who conceived of the idea.

More on that later too... Time to bake sticky buns. :-)

Arlo