[MD] Science and the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Taking Pirsig whole you would see he breaks out of your ridiculous 
"assimilated collective mind" and "bounded proprietary experience" duality.

[Arlo]
Taking Pirsig as a whole includes the following points. As anyone can 
see, Pirsig as a whole absolutely supports the idea of the "self" to 
be a conflation point between the assimilated collective mind and the 
bounded proprietary experiences of the organism. It is not a 
"duality" (but of course you would see it that way), it is an 
undissolvable dialogic pair.

Indeed, Pirsig says "subjects are social and intellectual values".

Read that again. It says EXACTLY what I said.

And where come "intellectual values"? "Our intellectual description 
of nature is always culturally derived." (LILA)

Some others.

"Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an 
understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and 
then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality 
stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you 
know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an 
analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything 
else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known 
before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon 
analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all 
communicating mankind. Every last bit of it." (ZMM)

"Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived." (LILA)

"This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who sits 
behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass 
judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. 
This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible 
fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. " (LILA)

"Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective 
world, never from the social world. The world of objects imposes 
itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever. It is easy 
to see the historic reasons for this myth of independence. Science 
might never have survived without it. But a close examination shows 
it isn't so." (LILA)

"Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," "scientific" view of 
life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved 
material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the 
other way around." (LILA)

"[Value] is the primary empirical reality from which such things as 
stoves and heat and oaths and self are later intellectually 
constructed." (LILA)

"The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their 
situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies 
Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons." (LILA)

So, no, despite your objections, what Pirsig breaks out of is the 
ridiculous dichotomy giving us only "evil collectivism" on one side 
and "glorious individualism" on the other.

You can make all the talk-radio distortions you want, I can back my 
position up with any number of quotes from Pirsig, nor do any of the 
posts you make deny my position. You on the other hand have to 
deliberately ignore 1/2 of his words in order to make your claim.

This is why you and Ham butt heads on this. You deny 1/2 of Pirsig, 
the half that talks about the collective consciousness and culture 
and social pattern origins of intellect. He denies 1/2 of Pirsig that 
talks about the individual and the unique experience of the organism. 
So he wonders why you support a "collectivist" philosophy, and you 
wonder why he doesn't see it as an "individualist" philosophy.

Its because each of you are capable only of seeing things in your 
dichotomy of evil-collective/glorious-individual partition. He can't 
see the part of Pirsig that values the individual. You can't see the 
part that demonstrates the social origins of mind. Sadly, you are 
both wrong. And will likely always be wrong, since you have your 
little war against "collectivism" to wage.

[Platt]
The basic theme of Lila is the constant struggle of the individual -- 
whether Lila, the brujo or Phaedrus -- against stifling, static 
cultural patterns -- whether represented by Rigel, priests or psychiatrists.

[Arlo]
And behind this "struggle" is the idea that individual exists because 
of culture, that her/his self is a pattern owing to social origins.

"If Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century French culture 
exists, therefore I think, therefore I am," he would have been correct."(LILA)

This demonstrates two sub-components.

The seventeenth century French culture exists, therefore I think.

And.

The seventeenth century French culture exists, ...therefore I am.

[Platt]
To ignore this thematic conflict and its resolutions is to be blind 
to the intellectual illumination provided by the MOQ.

[Arlo]
I don't ignore it. I take it in full context. To be blind to that, 
willfully blind I may add, is sad.