From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 09 2003 - 02:37:32 BST
All
I'm trying to pin down some widely held assumptions about the MOQ that
I'm not clear on, starting with this one.
Bo said:
"According to the MOQ all levels start(ed) as a pattern of the parent
level."
Is this what Pirsig said? Does he really mean that a pattern of values
in one level "moves up" to a new level?
The reason I ask is that:
a) I don't see the necessity to make that assertion - why couldn't a new
level be said to be created by the first pattern that fits the
definition of that level?
b) it can't be based on observation
c) It doesn't fit with the statement that levels are not continuous
d) a pattern of values is a pattern, not a thing, so it's not that a
thing starts doing something else so much as a new pattern creates a
different thing. That is, when a pattern changes, it is no longer the
old pattern in any sense
Bo, I'm not trying to prove you wrong, like I said, it's a widely held
assumption so it must come from somewhere. Is there a statement anyone
can quote which explicitly says that a pattern of values moves up a
level? The quote Bo gave just says that each level's purpose is to
preserve the level below, not that it was part of the level below. Is it
just inferred from such quotes?
Bo cited:
"Therefore, to the question, "What is the purpose of all this
intellectual knowledge?" the Metaphysics of Quality answers, "The
fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve
society. "Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and become
an end in itself just as society has grown away from its original
purpose of preserving physical human beings and become an end in itself,
and this growing away from original purposes toward greater Quality is a
moral growth."
Cheers
Paul
Hello Paul,
There is nothing in the MoQ which supports this quote: "According to the MOQ
all levels start(ed) as a pattern of the parent level."
Biological patterns make use of the Dynamic nature of Carbon bonding, for
example, but Biological patterns are not Carbon bonds. If one traces the first
replicating biological patterns to that instant when Carbon bonding became
significant, what is there that may be said to be the parent pattern of biological
life?
Social patterns emerged from Biological life behaving in a Dynamic sense -
but whatever sense this is, it's not a Biological pattern - there is no parent
biological pattern to the social level. A flock of seagulls or Sprats moving in
a swarm may be viewed as a social pattern in seagull or sprat terms; humans
swarm in their own ways also, (any time lapse movie of rush hour traffic/city
life indicates this to be so), but the social swarm is not a biological
pattern; it's not hardwired.
Intellectual patterns are a problem for people like Bo because he wishes to
make very clear statements regarding his own metaphysics - the problem is, he
does not take care to indicate that they are his own assumptions, and not to be
confused with the MoQ. As with the other levels there is no parent social
pattern for the intellectual level, because intellectual patterns are entirely
new relationships altogether.
The computer programme language analogy in Lila illustrates how one level
does not have a parent pattern in the level below it.
All the best,
squonk
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