Hello everyone
John Beasley writes:
Dan. I am not sure that I understand what you are saying, especially
relating to
complementarity, which I will have to catch up on some time.
Hi John
I'm not sure I understand either. :)
John:
As to your concern with
polarities, and that negative may not mean bad, (if I read you correctly),
my perspective is
that organisms 'read' their environment in terms of 'good' and 'bad' insofar
as what emerges
in the environment has the potential to help or harm them as organisms. The
organism
therefore does not find the environment neutral, or more correctly, what is
neutral is of no
interest to the organism, so can be ignored. What cannot be ignored if life
is to continue is
those aspects of the environment which have the potential to nurture or
destroy the ongoing
unity that is implied in the organism. The ability to discriminate 'good'
and 'bad' is therefore
essential to organismic survival, and I suppose that makes it a good thing
(speaking as an
organism). To know what is 'bad' for it is therefore a 'good' thing for an
organism.
Dan:
Ok now... we seem to agree that organisms always have alternatives. And if
no
alternatives exist there is nothing to value. But are alternatives in
themselves good and/or bad, but Dynamically so? Do we normally associate
positive
with good, negative with bad and ignore Dynamic alternative-ness? I tend to
believe culturally we do just that,
(see my Bucky Fuller quote in my earlier email) and this is why Pirsig chose
to use "value" and label value situations neither good or bad but instead
high and
low value situations.
Your parameters for "organism" are:
"Firstly, as a biological entity, the word organism brings up connotations
of an ongoing unity within a constantly changing flux. Any organism is
changing from moment to moment, yet through maintenance of its boundaries,
and its ability to choose holistically, it retains an identity while it
lives."
Dan:
We could say any thing is changing moment to moment, anything. Everything.
We need stricter parameters to define living organism. Is rock alive?
Certainly rock has boundaries and is constantly changing yet maintaining
those boundaries while it remains rock. Do rocks have choice? In ways
experienced rocks do indeed seem to possess ability to choose. Choice
resides not in rock, and not in subjective observer of rock but in Quality.
Can we deny that rocks tell stories if we learn to become aware of them?
Like living organisms rocks conform to their environment and adapt. Yet
moral structures holding rocks together and those holding living organisms
together are not identical according to Pirsig's MOQ. Inorganic and
biological patterns of value are discrete and seemingly oppose each other
while operating almost independently and yet simultaneously. Therefore
questions of dividing living and not-living organisms are seen as
intellectual patterns of value dependent upon our pre-conditioned
environment and not necessarily representational of Quality-centered
universe.
John:
"The relationship between an organism and its environment need not
carry the metaphysical baggage of a subject within an objective world."
Dan:
This statement seems much like trees falling in forests with no one around.
Since metaphysical baggage of subjects and objects must be experiential
events, if they are not experienced they do not arise. To say yes or no here
is to fall deeply into metaphysical traps which MOQ allows us to avoid.
John:
Secondly, while acknowledging that an 'organism' is ultimately an
intellectual construct, and tied to our Western scientific world view, it
seems characteristic of all human societies to respond to organisms as
individuals. Religious rituals surrounding death make this fascination with
the integrity of the organism quite plain."
Dan:
As well as birth. I can agree with this.
John:
"Thirdly, within evolutionary
thinking the term organism is one of a few key organizing terms. The
powerful explanatory value of the evolutionary world view has influenced not
only Pirsig, but much of our experience is made intellectually
comprehensible by viewing it in terms of facilitating our survival as
organisms."
Dan:
Your organismic metaphysics seems to define "organism" as something which
interacts with its environment, maintaining boundaries yet always changing.
Where are our boundaries? Do our bodies end at our skin? Do oceans end at
their shores? Or are these conceptual agreements we have made? If we look at
experience as our survival as organisms are we falling into "selfish gene"
scenarios? It seems this has classic "nature vs. nurture" undertones.
Let me see if I have this correct; ability to discriminate good and bad is
organismically subjective. Doesn't this lead us back to substance-dominated
thinking? How do we as organisms know what is good and what is not?
We need
no one to tell us to jump off Pirsig's hot stove, but let's suppose our
stove was made of radioactive metal by some unscrupulous company, and we
knew nothing of this deadly danger.
Not knowing is synonymous with having no
alternative in action. We wouldn't jump away from our radioactive stove and
yet danger would be present. Our radioactive stove is not neutral and yet it
is ignored. Any organisms by that stove will wither away unless they become
intellectually aware of radiation "leaking" from it. So far as we know, only
human beings are capable of that intellectual act. Does this make us devine,
so to speak?
John:
As to the word 'the', you say "'The' refers implicitly to object as existing
separately from
subject." I would say that 'the' indicates a specific 'object' ( I don't
want to get mired in
subject/object arguments here). I'm actually unsure whether you end up
disagreeing with my
main point, which is that the development of language and logic puts human
kind in a class
of its own, in which it may indeed be possible to attend to items that do
not carry value in
themselves. I am open to argument on this, though.
Dan:
In order to get to your main point, I felt it necessary to start slowly in
hopes my position would become clearer. No, I do not happen to agree that
human beings are in their own class because of language development and
logic and yet we are. Our human form allows certain pre-conditioned value
situations to
arise which only we are privy to, but much could be said of every form of
life. Language is our attempt to convey unambiguous meaning to other members
of our species. We do not understand modes of animal communication well
enough to say this is true or not true of
all other species as well.
As per my radioactive stove example above, I do not believe it possible to
attend to items that do not carry value without becoming aware of value, be
it high or low, per given situation, per preconditioned alternatives. This
is so for all biological beings. Value must be experienced for alternatives
to arise.
Platt brings to our discussion this example of "the negative face of
Quality" from Lila which I find very pertinent to our discussion:
"Suffering is the
negative face of Quality that drives the whole process." (Lila, Chap.
29)
What does Pirsig mean by "negative face?" I don't think he means to say
Quality
is either positive or negative but rather it is dependent upon what "face"
we as experiencers of Quality assign to it statically. Quality cannot be
defined. In John's organismic metaphysics it seems to me that he is saying
Quality IS either negative or positive, which is defining Quality, something
we cannot do. We can only put faces on Quality by making conceptual
agreements with each other.
John:
To everyone involved in debating my article, please be patient if I am slow
to respond. I still
resent the time I spend on the internet, though I enjoy the occasional gem
that gets thrown
up, and I am still attempting to find a way to keep involved without getting
snowed under. So
if you can live with a few days delay I will appreciate your tolerance.
Dan:
No problem. As you can see I am also subject to delays of several days or
even weeks. Hope to hear from you again soon!
Dan
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