Jonathan B. Marder (marder@agri.huji.ac.il)
Thu, 23 Jul 1998 04:49:17 +0100
Hi Ken, Horse, Squad,
======
DQ
======
Ken CLARK wrote:-
[snip]
>My bias against mysticism is long standing. I only feel
>comfortable with a materialistic explanation of our situation in the
>universe.
[snip]
> In my view both DQ and SQ are interrelated and our awareness and
>interpretation of them is constantly changing as our understanding of
>our
>position in the physical universe changes. DQ does not, of course,
>change
>because in my view it is fixed by the energetics of the universe. We
are
>simply unable, because of ignorance, to see the whole of it. DQ exists
>whether we recognize it or not.
This last sentence is a good place to state my dissent. My position is
that DQ cannot exist unless it is recognised. Otherwise it is not part
of our reality. You regard DQ as an as-yet undefined physical
phenomenon. I regard the physical-world we know as viewpoint. In
antiquity, man looked at things a bit differently. Modern physics works
for us because it is more coherent and explains more. Our picture of
reality (all SQ) must accommodate ALL experience which means all
DQ-driven events. My own interpretation of Pirsig is that DQ-driven
events are the only kind there are, though we always register those
events in SQ terms.
> To reiterate my position, DQ is the range of possibilities ...
> Jonathan, I apologize if I have inadvertently stolen your ideas....
Not at all Ken. I think a lot of what gets said in the discussion is
really a synthesis of many contributions.
That's one of the best things about the Lila Squad.
=============
SQ code and PRA
=============
HORSE wrote:-
>> >Inorganic memory = Substance (Energy/Matter)
>> >Biological memory = Genes (Instinct)
>> >Social Memory = Tradition (Cultural Beliefs, Laws etc.)
>> >Intellectual memory = Ideas (Thought, Science etc. )
>> I would say that the PRA/context at each level is every bit as
>>important as the "coding" (memory) and it's not always easy to
distinguish them.
>Explain further please as I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
[PRA=pattern recognition algorithm]
I will explain with reference to your following statement:
>As far as I remember (I might be wrong) certain charateristics of a
>species, and/or individuals, are passed from generation to
>generation via the information carried in genes. I think this goes for
>sexual and asexual reproduction...
This is true, but the genes themselves as an instruction set do not
carry the means for their implementation.
Naked DNA is rather inert outside the cell. An analogy might be having a
nice computer program on a floppy disk, but no computer to read it.
At the inorganic level, patterns of matter (code) are read by other
patterns of matter (PRA). Code and reader PRA are essentially the same.
At the biological level, code (DNA) and PRA (cellular machinery) are
different.
This difference persists at the social level (codes=laws, customs;
PRA=courts, performances). What's interesting is that at the
intellectual level codes (thought patterns) and PRA (other thought
patterns) are once again uniform.
Any clearer?
Jonathan
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