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

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve, 

> 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.

Maybe so. But I see the levels as moral orders. To separate the moral 
codes inherent in each level from the level themselves seems to destroy 
the moral aspect of levels completely.

> 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.

That the codes are included and help to define the levels is made clear 
by the following:

"Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel; trial by jury; 
habeas corpus; government by consent-these "human rights" are all 
intellect-vs.-society issues." (Lila, 24)

Regards,
Platt