[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo]
> Big on distortion today, are we? Okay, again. Pirsig claims the
> intellect invented a myth of independence from the social level. I agree
> with him on this. This is paralleled in ZMM's mythos-over-logos segment
> when he claims the "logos" bears a relation to the "mythos" as a tree to
> a shrub.

If you want to insist on "independence" that's fine with me. I really 
don't know anything that's independent of everything else.   
Distinction, however, is different. The individual level is distinct 
from the collective level as the intellectual level is distinct from 
the social level as you and I are distinct from one another..  

> Second, it is your distinction between "individual and collective" that
> is an illusion. Both the individual and the collective together,
> dialectally, form the social level. The intellectual level, as Pirsig
> formulated it, The Law of Gravity, Calculus, etc, emerges out of the
> social level. What you call "synonyms", I call "political warping".

So there are no human individuals at the intellectual level? I call 
that "Pirsig warping."

> [Arlo previously]
> The point is that "predictable behaviour" is another myth.
> 
> [Platt]
> That's news to me, not to mention behavioral psychologists.  I can
> predict my cat UTOE is not about to fly away like the birds he chases.
> 
> [Arlo]
> It wouldn't be news to you if you read Pirsig. "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."

Quantum particles inhabit a different realm of being than you or I or UTOE, or
hadn't you noticed? Lots of thing go on in the quantum that have no 
corresponding behavior in higher levels, like nonlocality. To take what 
happens in the quantum realm and apply it to biological and higher 
levels is risky business at best.
> 
> [Arlo previously]
> As can the pattern of a cell, or a cat (my condolensces on UTOE, by the
> way). "Quality is the response of an organism to its environment". 
> 
> [Platt]
> Do you have a source for that quote? (Incidentally, UTOE is very much 
> alive. I just used him as an example of the absolute certainty of 
> death. Of course, if you are a Christian . . . .  :-)

> [Arlo]
> The quote is ZMM, probably why you missed it. It precedes the amoeba
> segment.
> 
> "The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our
> environment can understand is that 'Quality is the response of an
> organism to its environment' (he used this example because his chief
> questioners seemed to see things in terms of stimulus-response behavior
> theory)."
> 
> Following the amoeba section, Pirsig continues.
> 
> "In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to
> our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent
> earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts,
> language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call
> these analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children
> in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone
> who does not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that
> which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the
> continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the
> world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."

You know, of course, that when Pirsig wrote ZMM he had not split 
Quality into Dynamic and static. Static quality also provides a 
"continuing stimulus" on us.

> Also, from Lila, of course, Pirsig writes, "A bacterium gets no choice
> in what its progeny are going to be, but a queen bee gets to select from
> thousands of drones. That selection is Dynamic."
> 
> Here, at least, Pirsig speaks of queen bees being able to respond to
> Dynamic Quality.

If you take that literally, all choices, especially sexual ones, 
made by bugs on up become responses to Dynamic Quality whereas below 
bugs there's no such activity, like the poor amoeba who has no choice 
but shy away from acid. But, some have suggested jumping off a hot 
stove is a response to DQ. Is that a choice? Not unless you have a 
strange definition of choice. I don't think Pirsig intended to have us 
think of responses to DQ as being instinctive, uncontrollable reactions 
like pissing, farting and jumping off hot stoves.

If I'm wrong, I'm sorely disappointed. I always assumed from what 
Pirsig wrote that responding to DQ  meant responding to the desire of 
the life force toward betterness. If responding to DQ simply means 
reacting to what happens in static predictable ways, like jumping off 
hot stoves, forget about it. It's a metaphysics of old tea. 

Platt