From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jul 17 2005 - 15:51:40 BST
Scott,
You said to Arlo:
>And how did the ability to respond emerge? How is any pattern observed? It
>looks to me like you are using Quality to wave away all the hard problems.
>I
>think Pirsig does the same, which is why I see the MOQ as materialism plus
>DQ as a deus ex machina.
Paul: Every so often you make this statement in one form or another.
First of all, materialism is a system which says that everything can be
reduced to the behaviour of matter. In the MOQ, matter is explained as the
behaviour of one level of value patterns. Although biological, social or
intellectual patterns can, in principle, be explained in terms of inorganic
patterns this does not mean that that is "all they are." So I don't see how
you can say that the MOQ is materialism and keep a straight face. Space and
time are high quality intellectual patterns postulated to exist at the
inorganic level in order to successfully predict and calculate the behaviour
of inorganic patterns but it is proposed that the value that creates and
maintains both inorganic and intellectual patterns precedes both space and
time and is not dependent on their prior existence in the fabric of the
universe. So your problem of how something spatio-temporal can be aware of
space and time doesn't come up, as I see it.
Secondly, with respect to DQ being a deus ex machina, if you recall from ZMM
it was DQ that Pirsig first set about trying to come to grips with. The
static patterns and evolutionary levels came later and so DQ was not lowered
onto the intellectual stage as something improbable to wave away anything
that Pirsig found hard to explain in terms of static patterns. As we can
see in LILA, it turned out that a concept of DQ could help shed light on
evolutionary growth, human cultural development, insanity, truth, religion,
morality etc. I would say that DQ, far from waving them away, provides
answers (or a new paradigm for answers) to a lot of hard questions.
Finally, with respect to the waving away of hard questions, the path you
have taken is to assume that semiotic consciousness is fundamental to the
universe, has always been here but is too mysterious to explain. What can
we say to that? Bummer?
Regards
Paul
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