Magnus Berg (MagnusB@DataVis.se)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 21:46:15 +0100
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Lars Marius Garshol [SMTP:larsga@ifi.uio.no]
>Sent: Friday, August 22, 1997 8:21 PM
>To: Multiple recipients of
>Subject: LS Re: Levels of Quality (was: Renselle's LILA review)
>
>
>Pirsig describes static quality as an agent that "works behind" the dynamic
>forces and tries to preserve what they create. Using this idea on the levels
>of quality seems to imply that 100 million years ago (during the reign of the
>dinosaurs, long before the arrival of man (or even our ancestors, the great
>apes)) there the levels of social and intellectual quality did not yet exist.
>I'm less certain on whether it means that entirely different levels of
>quality
>might have arisen in their place had the dinosaurs not died out.
>
>I think this also means that the intellectual level is fairly young (about
>2500
>years) and that no further levels have yet appeared, although they almost
>certainly will, if all goes well. This certainly agrees with what you've
>written.
>
>Hmm... I'm a little worried about how you seem to think
>that different levels of Q "appears" depending on external
>circumstanses. Metaphysics are not derived from physics,
>it's the other way around. Ok, you can construct a
>metaphysical system based on your physical observations
>to minimize contradictions within it.
>
>> As to the vague borderline between the different static levels I would
>>say that this doesn't endanger the Quality idea. According to it, the
>>static patterns are - like waves - patterns in an underlying dynamic
>>medium: different from other patterns but of the same "stuff". No one can
>>tell where matter ends and life begins, or where an organism ends and a
>>society starts (a body can be regarded as a society of cells), nor the
>>difference between communal cooperation and cultural activities. Still, one
>>recognizes it when one encounters the experience itself.
>
>Would you say that the levels of quality are really continuous, and that
>the levels are just terms applied to static quality by humans, but not really
>present in that quality by itself?
>
I'd say that the levels of Q are, like Pirsig says,
discrete. It's the subject-object point of view in the
discussion above that makes in vague.
> Magnus
>
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