[MD] Patterns

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt previously]
> My thought exactly. Arlo's "self-as-concept" begs the question, "What 
> isn't a concept?
> 
> [Arlo responded]
> Inorganic patterns of value, biological patterns of 
> value, and social patterns of value.
> 
> [Platt then]
> How are those not concepts? Are they not ideas? Are not "patterns" 
> symbolic abstractions from direct experience?
> 
> [Arlo]
> Read LILA. "Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of 
> static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the 
> patterns are not the reality they describe."
> 
> The intellectual patterns we abstract from experience are not the 
> reality they describe.
> 
> I'm not even sure what you are disagreeing with me on here. Clarify 
> this for me.

When you answered the question, "What isn't a concept?" by citing the 
levels I took it to mean the levels were NOT concepts. I think we agree 
with Pirsig and common sense that they are concepts, e.g., that words are 
not the things they symbolize, that the  concept of an elephant is not an 
elephant. 

However, I would argue that (perhaps unlike Pirsig -- I'm not sure) that
an elephant does not depend for its existence on my experience of it. 
Likewise, my existence (myself) is independent of other's observing me.

What say you?