[MD] Argumentation: Social/Intellectual

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: "Gene M" <boredandunstable at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: Re: [MD] Argumentation: Social/Intellectual
>Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 11:37:12 -0400
>
>Matt said:
> >   These arguments _are_ the person.  We don't _have_ static
> > patterns, we _are_ static patterns.

Agreed.

>
>
>I think that is Exactly right. We don't have ideas, ideas have us. We can't
>own intellectual patterns, it seems contrary. We are shaped by our ideas,
>created by them.

We're collections of static patterns of value, yes, and some of those 
patterns entail ideals of property ownership. Over coffee this morning, my 
attorney assured me that we can indeed own intellectual patterns of value as 
she mumbled something about copyright law (in between bites of blueberry 
muffin).

Gene, I think you are perhaps misreading what Matt wrote...we_are_static 
patterns...we don't have ideas; ideas don't have us...we ARE ideas!

This is something I touched on some time ago in a discussion here with my 
friend Mark Maxwell. If we change our thinking we change our behavior, and 
if we change our behavior we change the outcome. It behooves us as human 
beings to realize our potential is limited only by the ideas we have as 
self.

>
>Matt:
> > I was wondering how you would answer my suggestion that thinking of 
>ideas
> > as
> > disconnected from the person is, contrary to what Pirsig seems to 
>suggest
> > sometimes, anti-Pirsigian.  I've forwarded an argument attempting to
> > dismantle the underpinning of what allows you to say the above, which I
> > take
> > to be typical of a bad social/intellectual distinction.  How would you
> > respond to the argument?

Could you please offer for discussion a couple examples where Robert Pirsig 
seems to suggest the thinking of ideas as disconnected from the person.

> >
> > I should also point out that the dream of Enlightenment philosophy was
> > exactly the extension of the Platonic dream of ideas being entities
> > themselves.  I would warn away from such things, particularly because if
> > ideas are "not creations of an individual" I wonder what they are.

Agreed.

> >
>
>I dunno how Much I feel they are disconnected. Currently, I would say they
>are incredibly tightly linked. But I mean, I would say I as a person am as
>much shaped as ideas other people have come up with, as by the ideas I have
>come up with. In fact, most of the ideas I have are reformulations of
>someone else's ideas it seems. If I can be affected as strongly by and idea
>from "Outside myself" as one I come up with "inside" my head, then where is
>the link between individual and idea? Sure an individual has the idea, but 
>I
>mean, so do lots of individuals.

How can you tell if the idea originates "inside" your head or "outside"?

>
>How about this? When an individual person dies, does society fail? Do all 
>of
>their ideas simply dissapear? No.

Yes. All their ideas simply disappear. That's what we (the living) miss the 
most, I think. As for society failing: how would the individual know 
anything at all if they were dead? What you seem to be pointing to is the 
living. There is no doubt from the perspective of the living that the living 
go on living even after "an individual person" dies yet from the perspective 
of the individual, the universe ceases to exist at death, as does society. 
Would you agree?

>It seems like death is the end of static
>biological patterns, but the static social and intellectual patterns that
>made that person up continue on after biological death. So how can that
>persons ideas belong to them? It seems like the only thing we really own is
>our body.

I think the MOQ would say death is the end of social and intellectual 
patterns of value but not the end of inorganic and biological patterns of 
value. Inorganic molecules still exist, and DNA remains viable for thousands 
of years in some situations. So, how can the concept of ownership (being a 
collection of social and intellectual patterns of value) outlast the 
"individual person"?

>
>I'm not sure how to get across what I'm trying to say, I'm not even sure 
>I'm
>straight on what it is I am trying to say! Ask me more questions, and maybe
>I can coalesce these thoughts.

Perhaps my questions will help. Perhaps not.

Thanks for your comments,

Dan