[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

I said:
> > The levels each have evolved their independent
> goals but they orginally
> > evolved to support the levels below. If intellect
> didn't support society
> > it never would have happened just as social
> patterns would not have
> > evolved it they didn't aid in survival. I could
> dig out quotes if you
> > need them. That's another reason why it doesn't
> make sense to define
> > intellect as a individual versus society issue.
> There are conflicts
> > between the levels as they evolved to seek out
> their own goals, but for
> > the most part they support another's existence or
> they wouldn't have
> > evolved as they did.
> 

Platt responded:
> The conflicts between levels is a central theme of
> the MOQ. "The higher 
> level can often be seen to be in opposition to the
> lower level, 
> dominating it, controlling it where possible for its
> own purposes."

Steve:
"can often..." not always or primarily as you want to
say.

I already acknowledged that the levels have values in
conflict.  But before you can talk about the conflict
between the levels you have to define what the levels
are. You want to define the levels as conflicts
between the individual and the collective. We can
learn about what the levels are by thinking about
conflict and more importantly analyze conflict in
terms of the levels, but I say first figure out what
the levels are. 

Why would a higher level evolve if it is completely
against the values of the level below? It has to have
evolved because it originally helped sustain the lower
level values before it found it's own goals that can
be in conflict with the level below.

Pirsig says that the MOQ says that "the fundamental
purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and
preserve society." He says that, "Knowledge has grown
beyond this historic purpose and become an end in
itself...But those original purposes are still there."

That is one of many reasons why it is a bad idea to
call the 4th level "individual" in contrast to "the
collective" when it evolved for the purpose of
maintaining "the collective" (unless you agree that
you are defining the 4th level as something different
from Pirsig's 4th level).


> [Steve]
> > This is why I think you are doing a Wilburized
> version of Pirsig.
> > Wilbur's levels do represent types of people or
> worldviews or types of
> > societies where the intellectual level could be
> something to be reached.
> > A person or society can be at or on the
> intellectual level in a
> > Wilburized MOQ. But for Pirsig, the levels are
> types of patterns of
> > value so only ideas as intellectual patterns are
> "on the intellectual
> > level."

Platt:
> That's Wilber's view? Perhaps you have quotes to
> back it up. . 

Steve:
I'm not really interested in going back and reading
Wilbur. I've read about 3 or 4 of his books which all
say about the same thing, so I assume the other 20 or
so are similar.

My impression from Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is
that your Individual would have a home in Wilbur's
upper right quadrant in the rational circle or
whatever. Wilbur is happy to keep a subject/object
distinction, but for Pirsig the individual subject is
not primary.

> > Platt:
> >  The moral principle that supports  
> > democracy, the most moral social pattern yet
> devised, is based on the
> > freedom of the individual. The "intellectual good"
> is an "individual
> > good." By contrast,  the "social good' is the
> central principle of
> > totalitarian societies. 
> > 
> > Steve:
> > For Pirsig, good on the intellectual level is
> coherence, truth, logical
> > consistency, parsimony, explaining a broad range
> of experience versus
> > specific instances, etc.

Platt:
> Up to "explaining" you've described Pirsig's tests
> of truth, not the 
> intellectual level. Where did "explaining a broad
> range of experience 
> vs. specific instances, etc." come from? 

Steve:
Why, do you like it? 

I suspect you are trying to trick me into saying it
was my idea so you can say, "see you don't even
believe your own philosophy!" You almost  got me, but
I'm on to you. ;-)

It is good common sense to say that ideas come from
people, which is one way of stating the SOM thesis
that subjects are primary metaphysical entities that
think and act on objects, but in the MOQ that SOM idea
is subordinate to Quality, the dynamic-static split,
and the moral hierarchy of static patterns evolving
toward DQ. 


Platt:
> Are you saying like some others that all human
> activity is social, that 
> there are just high quality and low quality
> societies?

Steve:
No, I woudn't say that at all. Humans participate in
all four types of patterns.


> > Steve:
> > I shouldn't have said always, but when he says, "A
> person who holds an
> > idea is a social entity, no matter what ideas he
> holds. The ideas he
> > holds are an intellectual entity, no matter who
> holds them." he is quite
> > clearly in disagreement with you on the point.
> 
Platt:
> Here Pirsig says what I've been saying all along,
> that only individuals 
> hold ideas. 

Steve:
But Pirsig is saying that ideas are intellectual
entities while his individual is a social entity. You
want to say that individuals are intellectual
entities. 

It's okay to admit that you are talking about
different things. Maybe your MOQ will turn out to be
better than RMP's. I just wish you would admit that
your individual level is inconsistent with Pirsig's
intellectual level.



> > Steve:
> >  That quote is saying that the levels are
> independent--that a tree is
> >  something completely different than dirt and is
> not owned by dirt. 
> >  Likewise ideas are not thought of by Pirsig as
> the property of the
> >  social entity that we usually think of as having
> done the thinking, but
> >  rather the individual is inferred from these
> patterns.


Platt:
> Like I've been saying, societies don't think, only
> individuals thinks, 
> ergo the individual level. . 

Steve:
That reasoning is no better than saying that only
individuals behave socially so the social level should
be the individual level.

Plus, you are avoiding the point. Can you comment on
my interpretation of Pirsig above?

Steve:
> > The dependent aspect of the levels is that the
> intellectual level can
> > not exist without social patterns which can not
> exist without
> > biololgical patterns, etc.  But the levels do not
> contain other levels
> > like Wilbur's holons. Pirisig's levels are
> discrete as he often says.

Platt:
> But the individual contains the all the levels.

Steve:
Exactly. You've got it! That's why the individual
can't be a level.


> >  Platt: As for where idea are created, I maintain
> they 
> > are created by individuals. Societies don't think.

Steve:

Would you mind trying again to understand my point
here:

> > In Pirisg's MOQ, the individual in inferred from
> the patterns of value.
> > Once we make that inference it makes sense to
> think of ideas as produced
> > by the individual but from a patterns of value
> perspective it is the
> > patterns of value including intellectual patterns
> that define the
> > individual. > The types of patterns of value point
> of view in contrast
> > to your types > of people understanding of the
> levels turns your
> > individual idea on it's > head and says that this
> individual is inferred
> > from his patterns rather > than seeing the
> patterns as a creation of the
> > individual.

> > > Steve:
> > > Can you cite any examples where Pirsig calls
> someone "a social level
> > > person" versus "a biological level person"? 
> 
> > Platt:
> > Well, he calls criminals as acting at the
> biological level. Is that what
> > you mean? I presume when they desist from crime
> they rise to the social
> > level. 
> > 
> > Steve:
> > I  think that supports talking about biological
> versus social behavior
> > but not a person being a biological versus a
> social level person.

Platt:
> I don't see much difference.
>

Steve:
I think there is a big difference between defining the
levels as types of patterns of value and learning
about the behavior of people based on these values
compared to defining the levels as types of people and
learning about  values based on what these people are
like.

By the way, if the 4th level is the intellectual type
person level and the social level is the collectivist
type person level and the biological person is the
criminal, does that make the inorganic level the dead
person level? I really don't see how this "types of
people" interpretation holds up.
 
Steve:
> > As Pirsig says, "A person who holds an idea is a
> social entity, no
> > matter what ideas he holds."  He never to my
> memory says that one person
> > is "on the intellectual level" while another is
> "on the biological
> > level." If you could give any examples where he
> does that it would lend
> > support to your "types of people" interpretation
> of the moq levels.
> 
> >From Pirsig: "What's coming out of the urban slums,
> where old Victorian 
> social moral codes are almost completely destroyed,
> isn't any new 
> paradise the revolutionaries hoped for, but a
> reversion to rule by 
> terror, violence and gang death-the old biological
> might-makes-right 
> morality of prehistoric brigandage that primitive
> societies were set up 
> to overcome." 

Steve:
I can't see how that quote is a response to what I
said. Can you walk me through it?


> 
> > Platt:
> > although "properties" is rather a strange word to
> apply to man 
> > or cats. 
>  
> > Steve:
> > Exactly. You have lots of disagreements with
> Pirsig. That's what I've
> > been trying to say. You're not talking about
> Pirsig's MOQ with your
> > individual level. It's Platt's Wilburized MOQ.

Platt:
> If you say so. 

Steve:
Are you really agreeing that there are significant
inconsistencies between your philosophy and Pirsig's
MOQ or was that just the old school version of
"whatever"?

Thanks for the continued dialogue,
Steve


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