ELEPHANT TO TODD, BOBBY AND BO:
Todd, I really liked your contribution!.....
TODD WROTE:
Dear All,
The main problem is that "metapysics is degenerative"
~Catagorizing is degenerative.
~Defining is degenerative.
~ Prolonging life is Vanity.
~The pursuit of Happiness is Flawed.
~ Reason is Illogical unless viewed as a Tool.
~Comfort is Dulled Senses.
~Communication is Confining
~Men as books is Hell
(And these are just a few)
Oh yea, "Happy Holidays"
Beyond "Good as a noun", Todd
ELEPHANT: But I have a suggestion which is also a question, or a question
which is also a suggestion, whichever way you would prefer to have it:
Can we identify exactly what it is about metaphysics that is degenerative,
and exactly what it is degenerative of?
That's the question. The suggestion is this: that the degenarative part of
metaphysics is exactly the bit which is claiming some perfect methodology
for solving all questions, the perfect game in Chess that Prisig speaks of
(p457 lila). Now, it seems to me that Prisig's apparatus of "evolutionary"
levels, which are a very powerful instrument for explaining and moving
forward in the game of chess which Prisig is playing so eloquently with the
whole history of the 20th Century, is exactly that suspicious, risky,
degenerative activity that we should be wary of. It is not something
avoidable - as Prisig explains, just to think about the 20th Cent (for
example) is to engage in this substitution of one's own static patterns for
a dynamic reality. And what this substitution is degenerative of is a
reality that is a continuum, a value laden continuum, but a continuum
nonetheless: "the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our
later reflection with its conceptual categories." - James.
So, that's the degenerative part, IMO: fitting real life neatly into the
conceptual categories of the evolutionary levels. But that degenerative
part isn't the whole of Metaphysics, is it? There is something else
metaphysics is trying to do, besides answer every question one might have
about the 20th Century, Quantum Mechanics, or what to do about religious
icons, bar girls etc. All that bit can hold our attention a little too much
if those happen to be the sorts of questions we are normally interested in
(and they are), so much so that we filter out and fail to notice that the
metaphysics has all along be answering another kind of question altogether,
questions like: what is real and what does 'real' mean?
I think Prisig permits a metaphysical answer to this metaphysical question
which is in no way "degenerative": that the aesthetic continuum is the
fundamental, and in the end, only, reality. The rest is just a series of
'movies' playing in peoples heads - an image, by the by, which fit's Plato's
similie of the cave rather well (the light from behind, projecting images on
to the wall which are shadows of the real, ie the good, etc etc).
How does that sound? Degenerative? I think not. "Good as a noun": that's
metaphysics too.
BOBBY WROTE: PzEph, You wrote, Well, my question is : are the levels
actually patterns themselves? Bobby : IMHO, yes.The levels are static
patterns about static patterns.
Merry Christmas to all focusers.
ELEPHANT: And a merry Christmas to you too! Nice to get a kind festive
word (and nice to hear things I agree with).
----------------------------------
O.K. Bo, let's think about the spatial
dimensions metaphor for the levels...
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: Well, my question is: are the levels actually patterns
themselves?
BO WROTE: Better reply here than in the MD where you have taken on Struan.
Without delving too much into your own reason for asking this let me say
that I find comparing the levels with the spatial dimensions very useful.
Are height, breath etc anything in themselves? Does it make sense re. the
"nature" of the levels?
ELEPHANT: Just interject here that I've no special secret motive here, and
that actually I think I'm taking the same attitude to the levels which
Prisig does in his comments about perfect chess, alluded to above. But my
thoughts on the spatial thing can keep awhile...
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN: OK, the reason I ask this is that, when you try and
think of what else [other than patterns] they [levels] could really be,
nothing much comes to mind. What, after all, is our notion of Organic
except for a set of habits or static patterns about how we see the world?
And it seems to me that if the evolutionary 'levels' of static patterns are
themselves static patterns, this does alot to explain why we find it more
difficult to use them to solve every kind of problem in our discussions than
did Prisig.
BO WROTE: I have a feeling when you speak about "we see the world....coming
to mind" that you see everything as mind in a SOM idealist sense. In other
words that the intellectual level is THINKING and that the SOM is one
thinking-pattern and that the QM is another - both different outlooks from
the homunculus MIND inside our heads. This is not (my idea) of the
Q-intellect.
ELEPHANT: I'm sorry if I've given the impression of being an SOM idealist,
and it's something I know I need to be aware of. I'd guess that my
intellectual development is a bit eccentric for a MOQer, as I've come to
Prisgian radical empiricism from something more like the idealist SOM
direction, not the empiricist SOM direction (although actually this entire
process took place while reading Plato, not Prisig, who I read after). So
there might be something in what you say - need to be kept on my toes.
Still, to be honest though, I can't see what exactly turns on such a
careless mistake about 'mind' (that is if I am actually making it, about
which I'm not sure) in the context of what is after all merely a turn of
phrase: 'what comes to mind'. I suppose the stonger part of your accusation
that I am departing from Q-intellect is that I seem (with a bit of careful
quoting) to speak of the mind reviewing the world, as if 'world' denoted a
separate substance. If I really did mean that their separation here is one
of substance, then, yes, that would be a severe offence! But that isn't
what I meant at all. In 'thinking about the world' I meant, I think,
something really quite innocent of the ontological flavour you give it. I
just meant that we have experiences of value, both static patterns and the
dynamic aesthetic continuum, and that it is possible to direct ones
attention at these things. That is what Prisig is doing, isn't it? The
only sense I'm giving to 'world' here is the MOQ sense.
Now, as to space and time. "Are height, breath etc anything in themselves?
Does it make sense re. the 'nature' of the levels?" There's actually a lot
of argument about whether space and time are something in themselves. Given
that, in modern physics, they can be 'streched' and 'bent' in physical
interaction with mass and energy, this does rather imply that they are
substantial entities. Putting that to one side, this whole area of the
substantial reality or unreality of space and time is something that has
obsessed the hellenic philosophers and is also a presocratic topic. OK, so
you didn't ask for this: you only wanted to use space and time as a
metaphor....
Well, I guess that if you think of space and time the way Einstein thought
of them, then yes, they are an exceptionally good metaphor for the levels,
in that, in support of what I have been saying, they are absolutely *not*
imutable measures which are nothing in themselves. You want, as your
metaphor, the changeless euclidian/newtonian grid - but that doesn't really
fit to well, does it? There's rather more to the idea "intellectual" than a
line on a graph, isn't there? Likewise organic, social, etc. At a guess,
I'd say, if you tried to definitively explain what all the levels really
meant, you'd have to write quite a long book, like Lila, maybe longer....
maybe even a never-ending internet discussion..... with everyone disagreeing
about words.... and no perfect final check-mate....
The Pseudonymously Pachydermous Puzzler Pzeph
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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