[MD] Patterns

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
But It's a big leap to say that the individual is "therefore" 
distinction between social and intellectual

[Arlo]
More than a big leap, its a foolhardy jump. Even the simplest read of 
the MOQ shows that ALL the levels are comprised of individuals of 
varying complexity interacting, and it is from this interaction that 
higher levels emerge, themselves consisting of individuals engaging 
collectively.

Consider the simplest example, from an inorganic atom (carbon) to a 
simple biological organism (amoeba). The amoeba appears only because 
of the collectivization going on on the inorganic level. It owes not 
its existence to a single carbon atom. What it does owe its existence 
to is the presence of individual carbon atoms acting collecetively. 
Hence you could just as easily see the amoeba as a "collective of 
inorganic patterns" as a "individual biological pattern".

Even with the levels this process is evident. From a singular amoeba 
to a duck-billed platypus depends on the collective activity of every 
increasing individual biological patterns. This interaction between 
individuals and collectives underscores the evolutionary processes at 
work within all the MOQ levels. The social layer emerges from the 
collective activity of biological patterns, just as the intellectual 
level emerges from the collective activity of social patterns. 
"Individual" or "collective" is simply a matter of pragmatic focus, 
nothing more.

This is why Pirsig both points out the "me" is "just an impossible 
fiction that collapses the moment one examines it", but also 
understands the pragmatic benefit of this particular degree of focus. 
We create an "individual" out of a level of focus and then use it "as 
it is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and 
not some independent primary reality of their own".

The "self" is one such concept emerging out the social level. But it 
is not the only concept to do so. The self is "an idea", or more 
precisely a "collection of ideas". It is not a primary, independent 
reality of its own.

In this light, we can consider the value not of some ridiculously 
lone, isolated agent, but the value of the "individual-in-context". 
The value of the "self" is not its absolute autonomy and 
disconnectedness, but the fact that it is PART of a social dialogue. 
There is no "self" apart from the social world. (Caveat, there are 
certainly biological individuals, and these individuals would be 
responsive to biological quality, but there would be no self, no 
"mind", as these are social realities, not ones that arise from the 
inorganic or biological levels).

The trouble here, I think, boils down to trying to pin-point that 
carbon property within the social level that gave rise to intellect. 
Pirsig articulated the unique properties of carbon on the inorganic 
level that allowed for the emergence of the biological. I think 
Tomasello's argument that a similar biological property that appeared 
in the neurobiology of early man was this "carbon property" that was 
seized upon by Dynamic Quality and gave rise to the social level. We 
are now looking for this "carbon property" among the social level.

My current stance would be that the carbon property of social level 
patterns latched onto by DQ was the objectifying of symbols into 
entities-in-themselves. Once we could "think about thinking", once 
man began struggling to examine and analyze his own symbols, in this 
I think was the "carbon property" of social patterns from which the 
intellectual level emerged.

Thoughts?