[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> 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.. 
> 
> [Arlo]
> Only in your world, Platt. Not mine. You and I are distinct biological
> entities, perhaps, but we our minds are united by the collective
> consciousness. We have unique microgenetic experience, to be sure, but
> this is structured by the mythos we have both internalized.

Our minds are only united by a common language. Our intellectual 
patterns are as separate and distinct as a cat from an amoeba.   

> [Platt]
> So there are no human individuals at the intellectual level? I call 
> that "Pirsig warping."
> 
> [Arlo]
> There are individuals on the intellectual level. Individual intellectual
> patterns include the Law of Gravity, Calculus, the MOQ and Quantum
> Physics.

Did you not get my saying HUMAN individuals, not individual intellectual
patterns as you assert. To you intellectual patterns float around at the
intellectual level, soulless and brainless, free of any connection to you or
me or the man behind the tree. Ridiculous. You can't have thoughts 
without a human brain.  

> [Platt]
> 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]
> So, inorganic particles are not ruled by "predictable behavior", but
> cats are. But people are not?

All levels above the quantum, including cats and people, behave 
predictably. Otherwise, no science and no static patterns, Just chaos.

> [Arlo previously]
> "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)."
> 
> [Platt]
> 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.
> 
> [Arlo]
> I thought it was Dan who said that Quality as used in the ZMM sense
> should refer to Dynamic Quality. Can you provide a reference that refers
> it to static quality?

In Lila, Pirsig divides Quality he used in ZMM into Dynamic and static 
instead of classic and romantic. 
 
 [Arlo previously]
> 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.
> 
> [Platt]
> 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.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Why shouldn't we take him literally here? I see no contextual evidence
> that he is speaking metaphorically or analogously. Do you?

Isn't one of your persistent claims that all thought is analogous?

> And yes, I do think any response to "it's better here" is a response to
> Dynamic Quality. Whether its a carbon atom preferring to be "here", or
> an amoeba preferring to be "there", or a queen bee wanting to bang a
> particular "drone", or Platt choosing to name his cat.

Except for choosing the name for my cat, the behaviors you mention are 
automatic, not dynamic responses -- predictable static patterns of 
behavior.

> [Platt]
> 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.
> 
> [Arlo]
> That we are more complex organisms than bees, and can invent more
> complex analogues, is not in question. That even the simplest of
> responses to "it's better here" is Dynamic Quality is just the force of
> Quality at work.

Glad to know blowing a fart is the force of Quality at work. 

> [Platt]
> 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.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Isn't that what the amoeba is doing? I wouldn't be disappointed, in
> fact, I think it paints a much more wonderous view of "the world" than
> simple nothing but static patterns inhabited by singular beings alone
> capable of repsonding to Dynamic Quality (ie, perceiving "betterness").

The life force left amoebas in its wake eons ago as a static pattern at 
the biological level. . 

> [Platt]
> 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.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Responding to DQ means sensing "it's better here".

Automatic, instinctive responses set in static behaviors as preferences 
to survive are not responses to DQ which is always at the front edge of 
experience and comes as an unpredictable "surprise.". 

 >Why is that so
> threatening? 

Not threatening. Just wrong.

>We have more complex responses to DQ (in the invention of
> more complicated analogues, static patterns) than bees. Our "fondness
> for ourselves" can be gained from examing not how we alone can
> experience DQ, but the level of complexity to which we can statically
> latch that experience.
 
Even if you take "only a living being" can respond to DQ out of context 
and apply it to amoebas and queen bees, it still leaves out your 
quantum particles, unless of course you think quantum particles qualify 
as living beings. That would be ridiculous, but unless particles are 
alive, your edifice of DQ responding at all levels crumbles.

Platt