LS Re: PROGRAM Subject-object platypi and Metaphysics of Quality solutions


Horse (horse@wasted.demon.nl)
Tue, 8 Sep 1998 17:10:28 +0100


Hi RiskyBiz 'n' Squad

 
> However, I am not so sure I agree fully with the way he sweeps determinism and
> the purposelessness-of-life platypi away.
>
> On determinism, Pirsig states that if behavior is controlled by static
> patterns it is deterministic, but freedom is when you follow undefined Dynamic
> Quality.Do we choose to follow ? Could we choose not to? When do we see this
> to follow? Or is it some type of spontaneous value transition--yesterday I
> valued biological pleasure but today I value social harmony?
>
> On the evolution platypus(or the spiny anteater), the 4 levels provide
> clarifying insight on the issue. A species or life can be viewed as a static
> biological pattern of values and evolution as dynamic quality.However, he ends
> the topic by stating that the explanation of life is a migration of static
> patterns toward DQ. Is DQ a goal that life goes toward?
>
> It seems to me that Life is a pattern of replication with static latches.
> Dynamic quality improves the organism's ability to replicate the pattern or to
> adapt the pattern to changing environments. Life is the pattern.......death
> and extinction are just forms of pattern loss. It seems that the pattern's
> continuence is the explanation of life(granted a bleak view). DQ and static Q
> are the processes , not the goal.
>

I don't think that what we refer to as DQ has been explored enough.
There was a PROGRAM sometime back on the DQ/SQ split but
the essence of DQ (IMO) failed to emerge. There was also no
mention that DQ, like SQ, could also be subject to the scalpel,
which I think also needs to be explored at some time..

Anyway, for the moment, if we look at DQ as exploration and SQ
as exploitation then I think that the degree to which choice is
possible varies from very small to virtually total. Choice increases
the higher up the evolutionary scale you go, so at the Inorganic
level there is little 'choice' whilst at the intellectual level there is a
great deal of choice. The free will/determininism split is a classic
SOM red herring as it insists that there is only one or the other (A
OR NOT A). The MoQ, as with other schools of thought,
accommodates both free will and determinism.

In the sense that you appear to refer to it, behaviour is a
combination of all of the levels, the interaction between the levels
and the degree to which each level manifests itself. In addition,
there is also the problem that if patterns of value at a quantum level
are non-deteministic then how are other levels, which are supported
by this level, deterministic. Degrees of probability vary according to
complexity.

DQ explores an infinitity of possibilities, SQ exploits those
possibilities by finding stable patterns and choosing the best one
available - until a better pattern comes along.

> Or are the journey and the goal one and the same?

Why not? Who says there must be a goal!

Horse

"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.

--
homepage - http://www.moq.org/lilasquad
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