[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Platt's Individual level)

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

You said:
> Pirsig defines the intellectual level by its
> domination over the social 
> level, not as the container of all thought patterns.

I completely disagree. See below.

> (You have pointed 
> out that the social level pattern of government
> contains thoughts.) 

No, I said it is too broad a concept to contain in
just one level. To the extent that governing involves
thinking it is intellectual.

> When you define the levels by their conflicts with
> other levels, you 
> get closer to Pirsig's meaning.  For example, he
> wrote:
> 
> "Third, there were moral codes that established the
> supremacy of the 
> intellectual order over the social order --
> democracy, trial by jury, 
> freedom of speech, freedom of the press." (Lila, 13)
>

Now I finally understand where you are coming from and
where you went wrong. You have confused Pirsig's
discussion of the moral codes with the levels
themselves. If you read back a few sentences where
Pirsig introduces the list of which you've quoted the
third part he says, "As Phaedrus had gotten into them
he had seen that the isolation of these static moral
codes was important. They were really little moral
empires of their own, as separate from one another as
the static levels whose conflicts they resolved."

See? The socio-biological code is not the social level
itself. The code is the set of rules that society has
developed for resolving conflict between the
biological and social levels.  You are confusing "the
code which establishes supremacy of the intellectual
over the social order" as the intellectual level
itself , while Pirsig is saying that this code which
includes democracy, freedom of the press, etc is the
way that society has learned to defend the
intellectual level when the intellectual and social
levels come into conflict. He wasn't defining the
intellectual level here. He was just saying that we
already have such moral codes, we just hadn't thought
about them as resolving conflicts between different
types of patterns of value before.

Regards,
Steve





> Here it is clear that the defining aspect of the
> intellectual level is 
> its supremacy over the next lower level. Similarly,
> the social level 
> strives for supremacy over the biological, as does
> the biological over 
> the inorganic.
> 
> The supremacy of intellect over society exactly
> matches the  supremacy 
> of the individual over the collective as codified in
> our Constitution --
>  the right of the individual to free speech, trial
> by jury, secret 
> ballot, etc. vs. politically correct speech,
> vigilante law, communism, 
> etc.
> 
> Platt
> 
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