[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Ham Priday]

Hi Steve --


> I'm sorry to hear that you are so confused by this discussion.
> If you have any questions about the MOQ, I'd be glad to help.

Thank you for offering to explain the leveling concept to me, Steve.  I know
that your invitation is genuine, but it won't help.  I've seen this subject
being debated for over three years now, and it accomplishes no more than the
polemic discussions.  The problem, as I see it, is "verbal sleight-of hand".
Words and ideas taken from the common vocabulary are redefined in ways that
misconstrue and deceive in order to sustain a doctrine that has validity for
only the few who want to identify with this strange philosophy.

I'll give you a recent example.  I said that the MoQ rationalizes Intellect
as a "collective" that includes all the faculties that are proprietary to
the individual.  That is, it would have us believe that the essence of the
individual is a "collective other" without a subject.  In trying to refute
this assessment, Arlo actually confirms it.

[Arlo]:

> I reject that the dichotomy that purports that the "individual" and the
> "collective" are oppositional, polar, or even wholly distinct entities. I
unite
> the "individual" and the "collective" as dialogical co-constructs on the
social
> level.

In other words, there is no individualty, no "wholly distinct entities".
Individual and collective are "united" as "dialogical co-constructs"[?],
which to me means a rationalized construct.  Now you might unite a
collective as a political movement, but you can't unite it metaphysically.
The word "individual" like the word "subject" is a singular entity.
Awareness, Intellect, Cognizance, and Value-sensibility are all subjective;
they are all proprietary to a particular individual.  Collective
intelligence is a body of knowledge, like the database in a computer
library.  It has no awareness or sensibility; it is a compilation of
recorded information, not a unified entity.

I maintain that any existent without awareness is an object of subjective
experience.  Thus, the world is a true dichotomy: cognizant subjects
experience otherness divided into finite objects.  Even if we could "fuse"
all the subjects and all the objects we would not produce a unified whole.
The Pirsigians like to talk about patterns and levels.  They think that by
recognizing objects as interconnected levels, instead of "discrete
particulars", and merging the individual into the mix, they have overcome
duality.  That's a metaphysical fallacy.  Subject/object still exists: it is
the mode of human awareness, and it defies such reductionism.

Levels and patterns are not a magic solution to the dichotomy of existence.
While Descartes may not have proved his existence in the phrase "I think";
the MoQ does not prove that reality is a monism by denying individual
awareness.  In fact, if you reject the cognizant subject, you have no
reality.  In Zen terms, that's the sound of one hand clapping.  It's an
ontology I cannot accept.

So thanks for offering your help, Steve; but I remain an Essentialist.

Best regards, Ham