[MD] Platt's Individual Level, intellect & quality

[David M]

Is there some sense in which intellect overcomes quality?
So that we can make choices that go beyond our immediate
sense of quality in a given and immediate experience and the
choices it requires?

David M


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <pholden at davtv.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Platt's Individual Level


> Quoting Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net>:
>
>>
>> Hi Platt, Case --
>>
>> Case:
>> > Then we are agreeing that the ideas contain are
>> > collaborative efforts.  There really is no individual
>> >  effort to credit or blame?
>>
>> Platt:
>> > No. We agree that an idea(s) cannot be separated from
>> > an individual(s).
>> >
>> > Creative people are the catalysts of evolution. They tap
>> > into DQ, the "free force of life."  That's why creative
>> > individuals are so important.  Pirsig illustrates this with
>> > the story of the brujo, and puts the individual front and
>> > center by observing "someone has to be first."
>>
>> You know, Platt, I could support your 'Individual Level' of only you 
>> could
>> support the 'Individual Intellect'.  But while you concede that ideas 
>> cannot
>> be separated from individuals, you will not allow that ideas are CREATED 
>> by
>> individuals.  Instead you say: "They tap into DQ, the 'free force of 
>> life'."
>> There you go again, giving token support to the Collective.
>>
>> What happened to your admiration for the Randian view that only 
>> individuals
>> have thoughts?
>> Need I requote her?
>>
>> "...from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we
>> have comes from a single attribute of man -- the functioning of his
>> reasoning
>> mind.  But the mind is an attribute of the individual.  There is no such
>> thing as
>> a collective brain.  There is no such thing as a collective thought.  An
>> agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average 
>> drawn
>> upon many individual thoughts.  It is a secondary consequence.  The 
>> primary
>> act -- the process of reason -- must be performed by each man alone.  We 
>> can
>> divide a meal among many men.  We cannot digest it in a collective 
>> stomach.
>> No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man.  No man can use his
>> brain to think for another.  All the functions of body and spirit are
>> private.  They cannot be shared or transferred."
>>
>> Is this "free force of life" that we allegedly "tap into" your idea or
>> Pirsig's?
>>
>> I'm committed to Rand's concept that knowledge, intellect, and ideas are
>> proprietary to individual cognizance.  They originate with the 
>> individual,
>> are created by the individual, and acted upon by the individual.  The
>> individual consciousness is the primary mediator and choicemaker of
>> empirical existence.  I would have expected you to agree.
>
> I do. The free force of life (Pirsig's idea)is an energy, hardly a 
> "collective."
> And you put your finger on it --"choicemaker for empirical existence," 
> i.e.,
> evaluator. You cannot divorce values from empiricism any more than you can 
> divorce
> the individual from consciousness.
>
> Regards,
> Platt
>
>
>
>
>
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