[MD] Social Imposition ?

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo had said to Platt]
... with the exception of Mind, which Pirsig places as a combination of social
and intellectual patterns, and Self, which is again a collective of social and
intellectual patterns ...

[Arlo now realizes he typed too fast]
Actually, Pirsig does NOT limit the mind to social and intellectual patterns.
That was the SOMist paradigm he was arguing against. My bad. Instead, Pirsig
says of "mind".

"The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links between
these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms are
missing: biology and society. Mental patterns [mind] do not originate out of
inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of
biology which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know
so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as social
patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are
dominated by inorganic patterns. There is no direct scientific connection
between mind and matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, said, "We are
suspended in language." Our intellectual description of nature is always
culturally derived."

"Mind" emerges from social patterns, which emerge from biological patterns,
which emerge from inorganic patterns. Thus Pirsig concludes, "Mind is contained
in static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in static intellectual
patterns. Both mind and matter are completely separate evolutionary levels of
static patterns of value, and as such are capable of each containing the other
without contradiction."

As such, the "mind" is an example of a pattern that emerges from the collective
activity of patterns (social) beneath it.

As for "self", Pirsig offers this. "This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little
homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to
pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. 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. This body on the left and this body on the
right are running variations of the same program, the same "Me," which doesn't
belong to either of them. The "Me's" are simply a program format."

As such, he concludes, "This fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind,"
"people," "the public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our
language is so organized around them and they are so convenient to use it is
impossible to get rid of them. There is really no need to. Like "substance"
they can be used as long as it is remembered that they're terms for collections
of patterns and not some independent primary reality of their own."

"I", the "self", is also a collection of patterns. I agree.