[MD] The Individual Level

[Gene M]

> > [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.


Emergence is a pretty good theory for this one...

[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.


Possibly, it seems much more likely that he is claiming that the person is
not the body. Our personality comes and goes with consciousness, but the
body remains.

> "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.


You should probably learn more about computers, and the brain, before making
a case about this analogy. I think it's a fantastic analogy frankly! First
off, computer processing is Not the same in every computer. Different types
of processors do things differently. An intel and an AMD have a different
instruction set, although similar. The processors Apple uses have a
completely different instruction set, which is why they're software is
incompatible. Servers, Cell processors, SPARC, they're all different kinds
of processors, and each works differently at it's basest level. And with the
vast possibility of components to be combined, no two systems are identical.
Even two systems with identical compnonents will run differently, because
there are manufacturing differences between the components. Computers are
actually fairly unique individuals.

The process the mind uses to think is as standardized as anything I can
think off. The areas of the brain are becoming increasingly well known by
function and location, and tend to matchup between individuals, having the
same responses to the same stimula at the same part of the brain.

Personally I think the example of the human mind to a computer is Fantastic!
Admittedly computers deal with data in series, and the mind in parallel
using primarily pattern matching as opposed to number crunching. But the
similarities are certainly there for an analogy.

We're the software, the brain and body are the hardware. The real reason you
don't like the example is because it messes up your pretty argument.


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


Exactly. The individual is a great social  level pattern. Very useful. But
biologically, and intellectually the individual is nowhere. You're all about
Society Platt!

"The events that excited people in the twenties were events that
> dramatized the new dominance of intellect over society. Literature
> emphasized the struggle of the noble, free-thinking individual against
> the crushing oppression of evil social conformity." (Lila, 22)


Oh yeah, and describing an era with the MOQ levels doesn't mean he thinks it
was any good. As far as I can tell he passes no value judgements in this
passage at all! Hardly the basis for an argument.

Hmm, interestingly enough you snipped out part of that passage.
Unsurprising. Here it is in full:

" The events that excited people in the twenties were events that dramatized
> the new dominance of intellect over society. In the chaos of social patterns
> a wild new intellectual experimentation could now take place. Abstract art,
> discordant music, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial,
> contempt for alcoholic prohibiton. Literature emphasized the struggle of the
> noble, free-thinking individual against the crushing oppression of evil
> social conformity."


So not only are you For the individual vs. Society, you're also for
drunkenness, and disorder. Interesting.

Platt, are you an anarchist? Cause at this point you certainl sound like
one!

-Gene