[MD] The (Dialogic) Intellectual Level

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Ian]
So Platt, you're happy with the confirmation that

"Some individual, once upon a time, may have had an original idea."

[Platt]
So what are you saying? That some original ideas come from individuals and some
from groups? Perhaps you can give me examples of ideas which came from groups.

[Arlo]
Sigh. Here you are again with the "individual versus society" thing. The entire
POINT of my comment on dialogicity was that this "versus" is fallacious. Phony.
A political myth-monster.

"Original ideas" are the product of individuals engaged in collective activity,
through the mythos and as part of an ongoing, cultural historical dialogue. The
intellectual pattern that is "calculus" is not monologic, it is the product of
many voices throughout history, each speaking in response to what has been
said, and predicting what will be said.

Just as the body is made of many cells, so an intellectual pattern is made of
many voices. And each of these voices are themselves intertwined with the
collective dialogue, they arise from it, and are inseperable from it.

"Wikipedia in this light becomes an intensely dialogic phenomenon, doing away
with the idea of knowledge as emanating from single, authoritative, closed
(what Bakhtin would call 'monologic') sources and instead embracing the idea of
knowledge as collective, relational and dynamic." (Wikipedia)

It is not that "individuals" OR "groups" have "original ideas", but that it is
"individuals" BY VIRTUE OF "groups" have "original ideas". These ideas are
never "monologic", that is they are formed via the mythos, constrained or
oriented by the culture, and can only express the next part of the dialogue by
way of what came before and how they predict what will come next.

"Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was a historically shattering declaration
of independence of the intellectual level of evolution from the social level of
evolution, but would he have said it if he had been a seventeenth century
Chinese philosopher? If he had been, would anyone in seventeenth century China
have listened to him and called him a brilliant thinker and recorded his name
in history? If Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century French culture
exists, therefore I think, therefore I am," he would have been correct."
(Pirsig, LILA)

And, note this key passage from LILA.

"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. Therefore, to the question, "What
is the purpose of all this intellectual knowledge?" the Metaphysics of Quality
answers, "The fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and
preserve society.""

"Societies Dynamically invent intellectual knowledge."

"The fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve
society."

Arlo