Mary Wittler wrote on Tue, 8 Dec 1998
> Hi Guys,
Hi Mary and Lilacs
I was most touched by your opening words - optimistic but with a
sombre undertone. You'll be okay. I know!
> Instead of a 3 and 1 or 2 and 2 split I would go with a 1 and 3; the
> inorganic level being the only one that is actually "matter". I mean isn't
> the biological level merely an elaboration on inorganic "matter"?
The meaning of:... "a 3 and 1 or 2 and 2 split"... eludes me.
Regarding "matter", it may look as if the physical universe is the
overwhelming part, but in a MOQ context it is merely one static
level. I noticed that you earlier on embraced Ken's "universal and
human" quality, but this distinction is foreign to the MOQ. There is
only the DQ-SQ split - the latter divided in the famous four latches.
> The big idea here for me is what Pirsig calls Value Evolution (Chapter 11).
> Combine this with his idea that a dynamic advance MUST find a static latch
> for stability. When looked at this way I see that all 4 levels really are
> static! Logic is a STATIC LATCH!
It sure is if you mean Q-Intellect !
> We generate ideas all the time. But if those ideas can't withstand the
> scrutiny of logic (or meet a need at one of the other lower levels even
> though they may be illogical) then that idea will FAIL as a dynamic advance.
> That idea will be unable to find a static latch to "protect itself from
> degeneration". That idea will not result in a ratcheting up to the next
> level of Value Evolution. That's how Value Evolution works! It is a
> progressive ratcheting up from one static latch to the next; and logic or
> mind or intellect (these words are synonymous) is the mechanism that
> statically determines if that idea will push us to the next level or not.
> Now mind you that next level is STILL a static level, but the ability to
> generate ideas is the Dynamic Quality propelling that forward momentum.
Here I am a little bewildered. Do you speak of Intellect as a the
mechanism generating ALL static levels? If so it is not MOQ as I see
it. Dynamic Quality is the motivating "force" ...always , but if you
mean that a possible new level above Q-Intellect will have to grow
out of Q-Intellect. Yes!
> Help me here! I feel like I'm preaching to the choir! Is this apparent to
> anyone else? Am I completely off the wall with this one?
> Questions I have:
> Pirsig also talks about a driving force or desire at the sub-atomic level to
> snub the "natural" laws; i.e. thermodynamics, gravity, etc. He even states
> that you could determine the level of Value Evolution by the degree to which
> that item disobeyed these laws. So he is saying that life has attained a
> higher evolutionary value than inorganic matter because it is able to stand
> up and walk around.
Yes, the MOQ postulates a "weak dynamic force" because something
is obviously at work - it's self-evident. All right, the present Big
Bang model is quite a "weak" manifestation, but I guess that theory
will only last a few decades and a new one will replace it. When
P. talks about snubbing natural laws it is about the Biological
level. Life "pointing its nose" at death.
> Ok, this leads me to think that the ability to generate
> ideas is the driving DYNAMIC force at the intellectual level.
That "ability" is the STATIC Intellectual level itself. You must not
give ideas any godlike status, in 99,9 out of hundred cases they are
as trite and predictable as (whose mother was it?) breakfast table
talk. :-). But ...mind you ....Dynamic Quality works on overcoming
the statics of Q-Intellect as well, so sooner or later a really wild
idea will emerge (IMO the Quality idea is such
an event) and latch.
> What did Pirsig mean when he said in Chapter 12, "Mind is contained in
> static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in static intellectual
> patterns"? Was this a typo? Am I missing something important here?
No typo at all. He was merely paraphrasing the two impossible views
of SOM: (1) the materialist: " mind is contained by (out of) matter".
(2) the idealist: matter is contained by (out of) mind. These two
schools are reconciliated by the MOQ which says that the paradox
exist because SOM has overlooked the two static "dimensions" Biology
and Society.
> "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate
> out of society, which originates out of biology, which originates out of
> inorganic nature." This says to me that logic (a mental pattern) originated
> out of society.
Exactly!
> A biological pattern cannot form the logic necessary to
> evaluate its ideas. It can only react to them.
Hmm,"ideas" at the Biological level? Look. I have formulated a
list of how each level reacts/evaluates its own reality
(remember Value is reality):
INTERACTION (Inorganic) - SENSATION (Biology) - EMOTION (Social) -
REASON (Intellect).
According to it Biology only senses. This my list is not official
MOQ, but I find it extremely useful as it simplifies the levels.
> It takes the intellectual level of logic to be able to work with an idea - find
> a static latch for that idea. Could it be that ideas have been here all along but we couldn't
> evaluate them from anything other than a biological or social context until
> we had the logic (intellectual static level) necessary to do so?
Ideas in the Intellectual sense has not been around, but (as above)
the static levels evaluates QUALITY from their own context: Life
evaluates it as SENSATION and Society as EMOTION (if you accept my
list?).
> Do you think inorganic matter has an Idea when it uses the carbon chain to subvert
> the law of gravity? (Chapter 11).
I understand perfectly what you want the "idea" term to imply, but
again, Inorganic matter has no "ideas" in the Intellectual sense, it
only INTERACTS! Introducing ideas/mind is letting subject/object
metaphysics in through the back dor. It was DQ that grabbed the
carbon for subverting the law of gravity - creating the Biological
level.
> "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived."
> First we used some logic to statically latch the idea of a society or
> culture; and only then were we able to take the next step and use that same
> static logic pattern to begin to describe nature for ourselves?
I think Society in the most basic "emotional" sense can do fine
without logic or "reason", but the social tool called "language"
was grabbed by DQ to subvert the Social laws: it became the
"carbon" of Intellect.
> Pirsig postulates the "Myth of Independence". "The intellectual level of
> patterns, in the historic process of freeing itself from its parent social
> level, namely the church, has tended to invent a myth of independence from
> the social level for its own benefit. Science and reason, this myth goes,
> come only from the objective world, never from the social world. The world
> of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever.
> ...it isn't so." No question here. We needed that social level to exist
> before we could become capable of using logic to evaluate the natural world.
This is my little "thought experiment" - facetious perhaps -
but bear with me. All static levels have had their period of
"independence". For billions of years Matter was all there was and if
you could - ahem - speak to an Inorganic "representative" it would
say that it was all of reality. Later when Life had emerged a
"representative" would claim it was the epitome of existence. When
organisms had established social cooperation such a representative
would maintain that it was the fulfilment of destiny. Nowadays
Intellect claims that it is the summit of reality, independent of
the enormous body beneath it....and vehemently rejecting the
possibility of a higher vista.
> Wow! If I weren't on drugs I would think I was manic.
No, you are perfectly OK.
Bodvar
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