[Platt] With unique experience at all levels, not just biological. Anyway, your mind and mine are anything but united, as anyone can plainly tell.
[Arlo] Not according to Pirsig, who rightly describes how the collective consciousness unites our minds as cells in a body. [Platt] So can mine. But it's a static, not a dynamic pattern, predictable, repeatable. [Arlo] You mean you can predict everything your cat does? Really? Not mine. Mine responds to DQ biologically very well. [Platt] Well, if you read Lila you would know that responses to DQ become static patterns very quickly. When you show me a dog that can stare at its paw in wonder, then I will believe there is a biological response to DQ. [Arlo] "State at in wonder" is a social-intellectual response. I never said a dog can respond to DQ on these levels. But answer my question, what responded to DQ before humans entered the scene? Did dogs in North America suddenly stop responding to DQ because a few humans over in Africa caused a social pattern? [Platt] How do you know what my cat knows? As far as I can tell, my cat is very much self aware. [Arlo] How can it be "self-aware", and yet be completely an automaton to static patterns? Your cat is very much aware... biologically... but not socially or intellectually, and as such (according to Pirsig) has no "I am". [Platt] It doesn't lick any fur but its own. He doesn't need "culture" to know that he's different from the dog down the block. [Arlo] What it has is a sense of biological quality. It knows what hurts, what feels good, what makes it full, etc. (not in symbolic terms, of course). Again, "I am", according to Pirsig, is dependent first on "so and so culture exists", which enables a "therefore I think", which enables an "I am". [Arlo] There is a difference between using S/O language and reifying a S/O metaphysics. Pirsig's "self" (or subject) does not exist apart from the world (object), they are mutually containing. [Platt] Whatever that means. [Arlo] It means that Pirsig recognized that "I" is just a pragmatic reference point, that the "self" is not "apart from" that patterns from which it emerges. Your idea of "self" is about as pure S/O as you can get, with lone, removed, separate "selves" interacting with external, removed "objects" (patterns that are "not it"). moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
