From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 22:29:50 BST
Hey Johnny and all,
> >J
> > > The only biological pattern between two people I can think of is
> > > reproduction, which is why I see a marriage as a single biological
> >pattern,
> > > a single flesh, as it were, and not two individuals...
> >
> >R
> >I agree that 'reproduction' is biological, but I think 'marriage' is
> >social.
> >I see marriage as a social pattern partially directed at facilitating the
> >biological pattern of reproduction....
J
> Keep in mind that neither the man nor the woman reproduces, the marriage
> reproduces. I'm using the term in the literal sense, to mean a sexually
> active couple.
R
That's NOT the "literal sense" of the word marriage. You made up that
definition yourself. There are plenty of sexually active couples that
aren't married and plenty of married couples that aren't sexually active.
One need not have anything to do with the other... literally.
> >R
... But
> >imagine two hypothetical human babies raised by wolves. They live their
> >lives running with the pack and behaving exactly as the wolves do; their
> >behavior being driven by the same biological patterns as the wolves'.
When
> >the two of them interact, their behavior isn't any more "social" than the
> >wolves' behavior is.
J
> Wolves have social patterns, they describe how wolves interact most of the
> time. And those kids, say there were ten of them, would have their own
> social patterns that describe their usual interactions.
R
This is why I don't like your definition of social patterns as just
'descriptions of interactions'. Because it means that there was never a
time when biology existed without society. It means that every single
biological thing has social patterns that describe its behavior, no matter
what that behavior is, how it's learned, or why it's carried out. I don't
think wolves have social patterns. I believe their behavior is entirely
genetically hard-wired.
> >R
> >I agree that murder is social. Maybe 'killing' is biological... animals
> >kill each other all the time. But 'murder' is defined by a designation
of
> >law, which a social pattern.
J
> In my state, murder is not defined.
R
Are you joking? Your state defines several types of murder (as do the other
49) including murder in the 1st degree, murder 2nd degree (common law
murder), felony murder, manslaughter, manslaughter in the 2nd degree,
criminally negligent homicide, etc... all of which are defined by statute
and further delineated in case law.
> >R
> >I disagree with all this "immoral inverse" stuff. I think 'murder' is a
> >low
> >quality social pattern...
J
> ...it is only the breakdown of a pattern. I don't like the idea of "low
> quality" patterns (I agree with DMB on that one) I think all patterns are
of
> equal quality.
R
As to Pirsig's view, I refer you to Platt's post of 7/27 in 'The Giant
(types of patterns/types of people)" thread, which I agree with entirely.
Moreover, I do not think that all patterns are of equal quality, in fact,
that seems quite bizarre and absurd to my ear. Would you really say that
sexual intercourse is of equal biological quality to having bamboo shoots
jammed under your fingernails? Is democracy a social pattern of equal
quality to despotism? Is 2+2=4 of equal intellectual quality to 2+2=5?
J
Where patterns vary is in the strength of their expectation.
> Some patterns, like gasoline burning when a match touches it, are very
> strong, while other patterns, like wood burning when a match touches it,
are
> less strong. The stronger patterns override weaker patterns, but all
> patterns are moral patterns that try, for goodness sake, to realize
> themselves again.
R
So you're willing to distinguish between 'strong and weak patterns' but not
'high and low quality patterns'? What exactly would it be that makes one
pattern 'stronger' than another if not that the former is of higher
quality???
J
So there can be no moral patterns that are not good to
> continue, no "horrible" patterns of morality. If you show me a "horrible
> pattern", I bet we can find (in contrast to David, who suggested we'd find
a
> lower level pattern masquerading as an idea) that the pattern is in fact
an
> inverse of a moral pattern, an immoral breakdown of expected behavior.
R
Again, I think all this 'immoral inverse' stuff is just useless and
confusing. That some things are better than others is one of the very
foundations of the MoQ.
> >R
> >It's Quality. Quality creates the patterns as a 'vehicle' to ride
towards
> >higher orders of complexity and betterness....
J
> So you don't think Quality is active on the lower levels anymore, huh?
R
There are some among us that believe that DQ is only currently active at the
intellectual level and that the lower levels have all been 'locked down'...
I'm not one of those. I believe that DQ remains active at all levels. I
see a continuum throughout the levels which places the 4th level as the
'most dynamic' and the 1st level as the 'least dynamic'.
> J
> We may not have expected it 15 seconds prior, but our
> > expectations change as our experiences change. Expectation doesn't come
> > from us, it comes from outside us.
> >R
> >Expectations come from somewhere outside of us??? I don't think so.
> >'Expectations' are about projecting the past that only exists in our
> >memories into the future that only exists in our plans. They only exist
in
> >the post-interpretational (;-) world of static patterns. The
> >pre-interpretational present is indifferent towards them.
J
> Our memories came from outside us. I remember the Columbia tragedy
because
> it happened, it doesn't exist only in my memory.
R
Yes J, it "happened", that's past-tense. Now it only exists in our memories
(which are nicely contained in the present). The present is our only
reality.
J
Even if something does
> exist only in my memory, it is there because something happened outside of
> me (or was suggested to have happened by my therapist). You can't have an
> expectation come from out of the blue, they are extremely closely
correlated
> to reality, to history.
R
But this is not the same as saying that our expectations come from somewhere
outside us. Now you've back-peddled to saying that our expectations come
from within us but are reflections of our experience, which I would agree
with.
> >J
> > Haven't
> > > you ever expected to be surprised before?
> >That's what excitement is all
> > > about.
> >
> >R
> >How can you be surprised by something you're expecting? Isn't that why
> >"surprise parties" are kept secret from the V.I.P.?
J
> Yes yes, true. I was still thinking about the movies, or maybe a
amusement
> park ride, when you expect to be subjected to surprising twists and turns.
> You can't be surprised by WHAT you are expecting, but you can expect to be
> surprised in general.
R
I'm not sure why you think 'generalizing' the expectation defeats the notion
that you can't be surprised by what you're expecting. If one cannot be
surprised by WHAT he is expecting, and WHAT he is expecting is to be
surprised (even in general), then it would seem to me that he couldn't be
surprised at all, precisely because some sort of surprise is exactly WHAT he
was expecting. This sort of paradoxical absurdity is an example of just one
of the many reasons why your philosophy of expectation falls flat for me.
You wind up painting yourself into these silly corners where you have to
awkwardly explain how things like creativity and surprise are somehow
species of expectation. I think it's confusing and just goes logically
nowhere.
> >R
> >Yes, expectations change, but not always in advance. In fact, I would
think
> >that usually we have to go through the new experience and then reflect
upon
> >it before our expectations are really changed.
J
> Expectatins change to match what we percieve as the current reality in
> advance, in the "pre-intellect" simultaneous to the quality event (the
> quality event is our expectations being changed).
R
Huh? How could our expectations change in advance of our perceptions of the
present? Are we all psychics?
> >R
...You're confusing yourself by
> >unnecessarily linking two equivocal meanings of the same term. But we've
> >been there before.
J
> Well, go back and look at the etemology - moral comes from mores, from the
> latin "mos" - and it described what "mos" people did, not merely what
people
> thought they ought to do (though it did that too, but Plato tried to
> separate the good, the ought from the probable, and began the whole
> confusion). Also ask yourself why FOUR WORDS all have that same dual
> meaning. If they were equivical meanings, I wouldn't expect every word
for
> morality to have the same split.
R
What's unnecessary is your insistence on ignoring the evolution of the
etymology of 'expectation'. Once it meant one thing. Now it means two
things. It evolved because the former use of the term (the one you're so
stuck on) became overbroad as we realized that what was probably expected
wasn't always the same as what we believed was morally best.
take care
rick
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. - Mark Twain
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