[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt previously]
> So is the dichotomy [individual v. collective] true or false? 
> 
> [Arlo]
> It is an illusion. Or a myth, such as Pirsig refers to when he says,
> "The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing
> itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to
> invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own
> benefit."

So the distinction between the social and intellectual levels isn't 
true? That's news to me since Pirsig talks about the distinction all 
through his book. 

> Some more Pirsig...
> 
> "Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived.

So scientific truth is relative to different cultures, like in Timbuktu 
water is not two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen?
Ridiculous.  If there's one science claim to fame, it's that its 
provisional truths are culturally immune. 

> 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."

Descartes' revelation can hardly be called scientific. 

> It is the "uniqueness" of (what Vygotsky might call) "microgenetic
> experience" dialectically paired with the internalization of the
> "collective consciousness" (mythos) in a singular organism from which
> social level individuals (Platt, Arlo, etc.) emerge. Without the mythos,
> "we" are nothing but biological organisms. With the mythos, we are able
> to emerge as "thinking" beings.

Yes, as individual thinking beings who often oppose social static 
patterns. The brujo story is a case in point..

> [Platt]
> So how come the repeatable, predictable static pattern of an amoeba 
> reacting to acid is responding to Dynamic Quality?
> 
> [Arlo]
> "But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer"
> to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed
> to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is
> just a very consistent pattern of preferences." (Lila)
> 
> So much for "predictable". As Pirsig says, its just "a very consistent
> pattern of preferences". I agree.

By your analogy, biological entities can appear and disappear like 
quarks. Let me know how that's done because I have a few termites I'd 
like to have disappear.   

> Dynamic Quality is not contained by static patterns.

Right, but the pattern of an individual human being can respond to it.

Platt