[MD] The Individual Level

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve, 

> [Platt]
> Another reason why the intellectual level might better be called the
> individual level:
> 
> "For purposes of MOQ precision, let's say that the intellectual level is
> the same as mind. It is the collection and manipulation of symbols,
> created in the brain, that stand for patterns of experience." (LC, #25)
> 
> "The brain," a biological pattern, exists only in the individual. There
> is no such thing as a social or collective brain.
> 
> [Steve]
> Pirsig explains the difference between a brain and a mind:
> 
> "The language of mental intelligence has nothing to say to the cells
> directly.  They don't understand it.  The language of the cells has
> nothing to say to the minddirectly.  It doesn't speak that language
> either.  They are completely separate patterns.

The question Pirsig doesn't address is how brain cells create the 
language of mental intelligence, i.e., how a pattern two levels down 
constructs a higher and completely different pattern instantly. But 
then nobody else has come up with an acceptable explanation either.

[Pirsig]
> "At this moment, asleep,
> "Lila" doesn't exist any more than a program exists when a computer is
> switched off.

Seems Pirsig agrees with me that ideas don't exist except in viable 
human individuals.

> "The intelligence of her cells had switched Lila off for
> the night, exactly the way a hardware switch turns off a computer
> program. The language we've inherited confuses this.  We say "my" body
> and "your" body and "his" body and "her" body, but it isn't that way. 
> That's like a FORTRAN program saying, "this is my computer.""

I disagree with Pirsig's analogy comparing a human being to a computer. 
The brain is a biological pattern whose cellular structure is mostly 
the same in every human individual (with some notable exceptions). But 
unlike computer processing which is the same in every computer, the 
thinking process in individuals varies not only person by person but 
minute by minute. The focus on systems that marks the scientific 
approach to explaining how the world works doesn't work when dealing 
with human beings. That's the huge mistake of anthropology and 
sociology, as Pirsig correctly points out elsewhere in Lila.

[Steve]
> The individual is superimposed on top of a brain. The individual does
> not possess the brain any more than a child posses his parents.

The individual possesses her unique life experiences that in large part 
determine the symbols her brain manipulates and the way she manipulates 
them.

> So it is irrelevent that there is no collective brain since the brain is
> hardware while the mind is software.  The same software runs on many
> computers and so is collective. That is a good way to think about how
> intellectual patterns function. Your brain is running a program that is
> edited by your individual experience but is in large part written by
> your culture.

As noted above, the analogy of a human to a computer doesn't wash with 
me.

> And let's not forget, of your individual Pirsig in the same passage
> says: "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. 

I'll believe Pirsig when he demands that his name be removed from his 
books and his birth certificate. :-)

Regards,
Platt