Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Thu, 27 Nov 1997 06:50:20 +0100
Hi Ken:
I'm content with goal seeking rather than purpose if, as you say, purpose
implies an intelligence in the image of a personified God in Heaven
directing the activities of everything down here on Earth. But, my
dictionary says nothing about intelligence in its definition of teleology.
Instead it says, "Purposeful development, as in nature or history, toward a
final end." In your example of skin responding to stimuli, I would say the
goal or final end is survival which, according to Darwinian evolution, is
the guiding principle of history, as summed up in the phrase, "History is
that which survives."
Pirsig takes on Darwinian theory in Lila, Chapter 11, by asking the
question that Darwin and his fellow scientists dare not ask: "Why survive?"
The Metaphysics of Quality was built as an answer to that question.
Pirsig's conclusion is neatly captured in Chapter 30 in a sentence: "Dharma
is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives structure and
purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving understanding of
the universe which life has created."
That little question "Why?" is what separates metaphysics from physics. We
agree that Pirsig's answer is better than anything we've found so far. As
you said, "Evolution was propelled by the drive for Quality" to which I
would add "guided by the principle of rightness." Perhaps that's redundant,
but it helps clarify the fundamental assumption of the MoQ in my mind.
By contrast, the fundamental assumption of science is: "Evolution is
propelled by chance," what I call the philosophy of "Oops." So now we have
three basic explanations of existence: God, Good and Chance. It's very easy
for me to equate God with Good for I recall the grace that was said at our
table when I was a child, "God is great and God is good, and we thank You
for this food." Christians say "God is Love" which by my lights is the same
as God is Good. So I have no problem with people saying God is the creator
as long as God is not a captive of any one social pattern, i.e. religion.
Likewise I would not want to see Gaia elevated to the level of God as I
fear some environmental activists would have us to do, Gaia being a
biological pattern.
If God and Good are considered the same, that leaves Chance as the only
other viable explanation for creation. Whenever science was challenged to
explain how Chance can be the basis of order, they had a knockdown reply,
"How else can you explain it?" Now Pirsig has given us a knockdown answer,
the Metaphysics of Quality. Not only does it explain creation, but it
dissolves the inherent puzzles and paradoxes (Pirsig's famous "platypi)"
that have haunted the scientific worldview since its inception.
However, I give great credit to science for coming to the realization, with
their discovery of the quantum world, that their philosophical edifice of
Chance was built on sand and that their precious "mechanisms" for
explaining the world (such as neural synapses explaining consciousness) are
fundamentally wrong. What they discovered instead at the very base of
existence was observation, i.e. awareness, i.e. Dynamic Quality, i.e. pure
experience uncontaminated by thought. Thanks to excellent posts here on the
Lila Squad by Doug Renselle and others (which you may not have had a chance
to see) I've learned that quantum physics fully supports the MoQ.
Well, you can see how your thoughts spark my own. The sparking I take to be
a form of Dynamic Quality, not necessarily the thoughts. I look forward to
your comments.
Platt
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:42:15 CEST