[MD] Social Imposition ?

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
A key passage in the MOQ, religiously ignored by the proponents of magically
emergent systems and Darwin's theory of "oops," -- another lucky accident. 

[Arlo]
Sometimes I wonder why you go to such lengths to distort what has been said. No
one "ignores" that quote   [about "only a living being" can respond to DQ],
indeed I have talked about it many times, as recently as yesterday with Chin!
One wonders why you "religiously" distort that fact.

And your use of "magically" demonstrates not only that you have not really cared
what I have been saying, but only wish to distort it and disparage it. Indeed,
you have to explain why "dynamically invent" is any less "magical" than
"emerge". All I can gather is that you see DQ has having some "predivined plan"
as to how evolution should unfold.

As Case points out, if anything BOTH "emergence" and "dynamically invents" are
"AHA!" Neither propose some preconceived plan, neither points to a cell that
decided to "invent" an animal, but BOTH point out that the pattern we call an
"animal" results from individual cells collectivizing, neither points to an
animal that "invents" society, but BOTH point out that social patterns result
from the collective activity of individual animals.

Speaking of religious adherences, you selectively isolate the above quote (as
you tend to do with those passages of the Bible that support your "cause") and
ignore what else Pirsig has said.

For example, he does consider NYC (as his example) to be a "higher organism".
"Yet the social pattern of the city devours their lives for its own purposes
just as surely as farmers devour the flesh of farm animals. A higher organism
is feeding upon a lower one and accomplishing more by doing so than the lower
organism can accomplish alone." He then debunks your "invented by someone"
stuff by saying, "The metaphysics of substance makes it difficult to see the
Giant. It makes it customary to think of a city like New York as a "work of
man," but what man invented it? What group of men invented it? Who sat around
and thought up how it should all go together?" No "one", nor no "group" sat
around and "invented it". It emerges by virtue of the collective activity of
man, but it is more than that.

Then there is the very passage you had provided in support of your "single
inventor" theory. "The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and
improve their situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and
societies Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons."
Here we do see "societies" inventing intellectual knowledge. And if you see
that the entire point of this passage was to demonstrate that "dynamical
invention" is a SIMILAR process between all the MOQ layers, then it is easy to
see that what "is" dynamically invented is so out of "collective activity". 

As for the disparaging of Darwinian theory as "oops", you should bear in mind
Pirsig's assertion that "Good! The "undefined fittest" they are defending is
identical to Dynamic Quality. Natural selection is Dynamic Quality at work.
There is no quarrel whatsoever between the Metaphysics of Quality and the
Darwinian Theory of Evolution".

Finally, I tire of the distortion that "emergence" of "collective activity"
denies any value in the "individual". I've addressed this many, many times and
yet it seems as if at every chance you act like "Oh, Arlo, he denies the
individual has any value". He doesn't, many times over. But he sees that it
through collective activity that the individual exists, is enabled and can
respond to DQ in the way we do today instead of four thousand years ago.