[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
I take it you are against intellectual property and the copyright law.

[Arlo]
No. But I think they are currently stretched way to far. At any rate, "copyright
law" is a social pattern of attribution, which assumes that the only reason
people labor is for material profit.

[Platt]
Individual human beings with individual brains were instrumental in  creating
the Law of Gravity...

[Arlo]
Individual cells with individual nuclei were instrumental in creating your
brain. So what?

[Platt]
These and other individuals are the shining stars of the intellectual level
without whom no significant intellectual patterns arise.

[Arlo]
Ah, I see. Back to the ol' absolute dichotomy. If I don't believe it was the
individual in isolation, I must believe the individual has no role whatsoever.
It's an inane dichotomy.

[Platt]
I'm not talking about properties. I'm talking about necessities. You can't have
thoughts without a human brain. This is basic stuff, Arlo.

[Arlo]
Um, you can't have a brain without cells. Seems to me they are a "necessity".
But necessity and property are simply top-down or bottom-up ways of describing
the same thing. Your rhetorical shift, much as it's appreciated, is once again
off the mark.

[Platt]
Yes, predictably UTOE will wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, sleep  til
noon, have a snack, sleep to until supper, have supper, sit on my lap for
awhile and then go to bed for the night. If your cat acts much  differently
than my cat, I'd be surprised. After all, what we call "cat" is simply a body
of predictable bodily configuration and behaviors.

[Arlo]
Yes, Puddy Meow (I am not kidding) has a routine, just as I do, but this hardly
makes her a slave to automatic behavior. Why, just last weekend, she got out, a
"sense of it's better here" led her on a strange quest, where she followed DQ.
Sorry your cat is such a robot.

[Arlo previously]
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?

[Platt] 
You forget that people consist of all patterns from inorganic up to 
intellectual. The inorganic and biological patterns of a human are  completely
predictable. Everyone gets hungry and thirsty. Every heart  beats. Sooner or
later everybody dies. Absolutely predictable. That's  what "static quality"
means, the predictable side of the front edge of  experience.

[Arlo]
Still waiting for any Pirsig reference that associates "static quality" with the
"front-edge of experience". But I know I'll be waiting for quite a loooooooong
time.

But, if static patterns are "absolutely predictable", then the social and
intellectual levels are too, as they are also "static levels".

"In this plain of understanding static patterns of value are divided into four
systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social patterns and
intellectual patterns."

So, are the social and intellectual levels also completely "predictable", after
all, they are "static levels"?

But, to remind to onlookers as to the outrageous distortion that is "static
quality is the front edge of experience", I... once again... refer you to
Pirsig. First, the obvious...

"Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of
all things, completely simple and always new."

"Static quality ... emerges in the wake of Dynamic Quality. It is old and
complex. It always contains a component of memory. Good is conformity to an
established pattern of fixed values and value objects."

Hardly says "Dynamic and static quality are both front-edge experience", does
it.

More.

"An amoeba, placed on a plate of water with a drip of dilute sulfuric acid 
placed nearby, will pull away from the acid (I think). If it could speak 
the amoeba, without knowing anything about sulfuric acid, could say, 'This 
environment has poor quality.' [FRONT EDGE OF EXPERIENCE] If it had a 
nervous system it would act in a much more complex way to overcome the poor
quality of the environment. It would seek analogues, that is, images and
symbols from its previous experience [STATIC PATTERNS], to define the 
unpleasant nature of its new environment and thus 'understand' it."

"The negative esthetic quality of the hot stove in the earlier example was now
given some added meaning by a static-Dynamic division of Quality. When the
person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality situation, the
front edge of his experience is Dynamic [FIRST RESPONSE TO SITTING ON A HOT
STOVE IS DYNAMIC - FRONT EDGE OF EXPERIENCE IS DYNAMIC]. He does not think,
"This stove is hot," and then make a rational decision to get off. A "dim
perception of he knows not what" gets him off Dynamically [NOT STATICALLY].
Later he generates static patterns of thought to explain the situation
[AFTERWARDS COMES STATIC - IT IS NOT FRONT EDGE BUT GENERATED IN THE
AFTERMATH]."

"And they [THE STATIC PATTERNS] are completely different [AHEM!] from the
biological pattern [DYNAMIC RESPONSE] that can cause the most skeptical of
intellectuals to leap from a hot stove [IT IS BIOLOGICAL PATTERN RESPONSE TO
HOT STOVE THAT IS DYNAMIC]."

Praytell explain to me how you get from this that "static quality is also at the
front edge of experience"? But, I know I'll keep waiting in vain on this one...

Arlo