[MD] The Individual Level

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

Steve:
> 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:
Agree. Wilber keeps the subject/object distinction, but in Lila the  
brujo was very important as was not executing an individual criminal  who posed to threat to society for "only a living being" (human individual) can perceive or adjust to DQ.   

Steve:
I never said that individuals aren’t important in Pirsig’s work. He definitely wants to understand the values of individuals and how the conflicts in values play out in human history.

I’m saying it’s much different to say that the MOQ can be applied to understand such conflicts than to say that the MOQ takes those conflicts as definitions of the levels.



> 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:
Why? Other levels include lower levels, yet become a level. 


Steve:
It seems absurd to say that your individual level contains all the levels including the individual level.

This is an issue at the root of our disagreement. I don’t see the levels as containing other levels like Wilbur’s holons. I see the levels as discrete.

Can you give any textual support for thinking of the levels as containing other levels—not of an individual as being composed of patterns of all levels, but the levels containing other levels?

The closest thing I could find is from Pirsig’s Letter to Paul (sounds Biblical):

“When getting into a definition of the intellectual level much clarity can be gained by recognizing a parallel with the lower levels. Just as every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic patterns are biological; and just as every social level is also biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are intellectual.”

I’m not sure it helps either of our position because in Platt’s MOQ the last sentence translates as “every individual is collective, though not every collective is individual.”
 

> > >  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.

Platt:
Sounds to me like a chicken or egg question. I say you can't have 
intellectual patterns without human beings (individuals) to create 
them.

Steve:
It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg, and that’s a good point. But in this case I think we can figure out where Pirsig’s metaphysics starts. Does it start with the individual or does it start with the collections of patterns of value from which we create an analogue of this individual? Well it starts with Quality, but what comes next, patterns of values or individuals.

This question seems to be at the root of our disagreement. Would you agree?



Steve:
> 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.

Platt:
I think you're beginning to get it. The biological level overcame 
death. Pirsig has a long explanation of how that occurred. 


Steve:
I’m find with applying the MOQ to understand types of people. I think it is a mistake to define the levels as types of people. After all, the four levels plus DQ are said to leave nothing out.



> 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:
Terror, violence and gang death are actions of individuals and thus  
people acting on the biological level. 

Steve:
So this individual is on the biological level? I had assumed that individuals were on the individual level in Platt’s MOQ. Now I am really confused.


> 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"?

Platt:
I'm agreeing that you and I have different interpretations of the MOQ.

Steve:
I hope we are coming to a better understanding of one another’s interpretations.

Regards,
Steve


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