[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Case]

> [Case]
> Then we are agreeing that the ideas contain are collaborative efforts.
There
> really is no individual effort to credit or blame?

[Platt]
No. We agree that an idea(s) cannot be separated from an individual(s).

[Case]
I see that you attach great significance to this but I am not sure why. As
the Preacher said about 3000 years ago "There is no new thing under the
sun." To say that ideas reside in individuals is not especially profound
where else but limbo or oblivion would they be. You could be espousing some
version of idealism in which ideas are "out there" waiting to be discovered
but that would not suit your purposes very well, I should like. You
certainly can not be thinking that any one is creating new wholly formed
ideas out of nowhere in isolation. The best one can say about is that some
people are very creative in rearranging ideas and seeing new relationships
among them.

To you think that the rearrangement of ideas is especially praiseworthy?
What credit does someone like Pirsig or Springsteen deserve for their
creative arrangements beyond the price of their books or recordings and a
hearty, Thanks? Can anyone own an idea in the same sense that they own a car
or a house?

Should we arrange our social structures to defend the ownership of ideas at
the expense of the public interest and the public purse?

Beyond your philosophical reverence for "the individual" I think I am
missing something.