[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Arlo Bensinger]

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

[Arlo]
Intellectual patterns are not the property of you or me, any more than I am 
the property of my cells. Calculus does not belong to any "individual".

[Arlo previously]
There are individuals on the intellectual level. Individual intellectual 
patterns include the Law of Gravity, Calculus, the MOQ and Quantum Physics.

[Platt]
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.

[Arlo]
And you can't have a human brain without cells. And cells without atoms. 
And atoms without protons. That "intellectual patterns" depend on brains as 
hardware no more makes them a property of the brain, than the fact that the 
brain relies on cells makes the brain a property of cells. This is basic 
emergent stuff, Platt.

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

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

[Arlo]
I prefer Pirsig, there are "very consistent patterns of preferences" that 
make up what we call "static quality". By the way, I'm not sure what kind 
of cat you have, but mine is hardly an automaton of predictable behavior. 
She makes decisions, dynamically, based on "it's better here" every day. 
I'm sorry to hear UTOE behaves as a predictable robot. By the way, I notice 
here too you say that people behave predictably? How can that be if we can 
respond to DQ? I thought that "behaving predictably" was your argument for 
things being incapable of responding to DQ?


Arlo