From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Sep 10 2004 - 17:52:29 BST
Ham Priday to Scott Roberts, David Morey, Platt Holden
Sent: Friday, September 10, 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: MD A bit of reasoning
On 9/7 Platt said:
> You omitted a key component--an individual PERSON who
> does the thinking and responding to DQ. (See inserts
> in caps to your reasoning.) Also, I've changed No. 4 because you
> inadvertently repeated "static intellectual patterns of value," creating a
> contradiction, and I eliminated the idea that "thought grows plants"
> because thought as Pirsig defines it (collection and manipulation of
> symbols) is limited to humans. (Plants can't read Lila.) Finally, I
> reached a different conclusion.
Scott replied:
> I am disagreeing with the notion that intellect only happens in people, so
> I am declining your suggestions :-). Plants can't read Lila, but they can
> -- or their species can -- read the soil they are in, match bits of it
with
> the pattern of "nutrition" and so take it in and grow. Also, DQ can't
> change a lizard into a bird, but it can take the idea of a lizard and use
> it to build the idea of a bird (with, no doubt, a lot of trial and error,
> for which particulars provide feedback, and maybe not even knowing what it
> is building until it gets built -- I'm not trying to support the usual
> Intelligent Design argument here).
What is wrong with supporting "Intelligent Design"? It certainly makes
more sense than attributing Intellect to the amoeba or plant. This thread
is titled "A bit of reasoning". At the risk of offending those of you who
abhor the word Teleology and yet seem determined to prove that purpose is
implicit in Quality, let me try to inject some reason into this discussion
with the help of a biologist. (I dusted off two small paperbacks from my
50-year collection which I heartily recommend to MOQers suffering from
anti-teleolosis. Both are clearly written from an empirical perspective,
although their authors are vitalists. Dr. Edmund W. Sinnott's "Biology of
the Spirit", published by Compass Books, uses biological data to show how
purpose is rooted in the properties of protoplasm. Dr. Kenneth Walker, a
consulting surgeon and Professor to the Royal College of Surgeons, wrote a
gem of a book called "Diagnosis of Man", published by Pelican Books.)
Here are some pertinent quotes from the Sinnott book:
"Dualism is especially unpopular as a philosophy for science since it seems
to imply mysticism, the supernatural, and the existence of disembodied
spirits, with none of which science is prepared to deal. The alternative
monistic philosophy, however, in its commonest form sees the universe as
indeed a unity but a unity based only on matter, the final reality. It looks
on mind as a by-product with no real existence of its own, something that is
tied inexorably to physical processes and produced by them much as music is
produced by a phonograph. The material part of man appears to permanent and
stable that it seems to offer a more satisfactory basis for his life than
the fluctuating and discontinuous existence of his 'mind'.
"Something there surely is in any living thing which pulls dead, random
matter into the form of an organized indicidual and holds it steadily there
through material flux and change. The moment death occurs a radical
alteration takes place, for this integratinbg force is gone and the bodily
materials at once begin to break up into randomness again. This organizing
power is life's peculiar quality [Mr. Pirsig would be thrilled with this
predicate!] It never seems to arise spontaneously but is passed along from
one organism to its offspring in a kind of apostolic succession, without a
break."
"The act of self-regulation, of purposiveness, implies the presence of
something to regulate 'to', a goal that is being sought. The reactions of a
living thing to its environment are such as will help it reach this goal. It
seeks conditions of light or temperature or situation that are favorable to
the attainment and the maintenance of its particular inner organization. The
young plant bends toward the light. The trout seeks a cool and flowing
stream. Living things react 'toward' something. ...At the primitive
psychical level--if our theory is correct--this goal is inwardly felt as
something 'desired', at first unconscviously and instinctively, but with
greater vividness in higher forms, and especially in man. The beginnings of
desire, of the feelings of wanting and seeking, thus are rooted is a quest
for whatever will help attain a particular end."
--Sinnott: "Biology of the Spirit", V. The Philosophy of Goals
If a biologist can understand purposiveness in Nature as a form of Desire,
why can't the philosopher? Although I have
defined Value as the intellectual object of Desire, you guys might want to
consider DQ more from the desideristic than the intellectual perspective.
(Just a suggestion.)
Essentially,
Ham
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