RISKYBIZ9@aol.com
Sun, 6 Sep 1998 02:21:51 +0100
Pirsig's eighth chapter is where the magic of MOQ hit me with the sudden
insight of Dynamic Quality.The shift from subject/object to value allows many
of the following platypi of conventional thinking to disappear.
Reality vs Scientific Theory
Causation
The discontinuity of substance
Taking the Humanities beyond Relativism
Mind vs matter
However, I am not so sure I agree fully with the way he sweeps determinism and
the purposelessness-of-life platypi away.
On determinism, Pirsig states that if behavior is controlled by static
patterns it is deterministic, but freedom is when you follow undefined Dynamic
Quality.Do we choose to follow ? Could we choose not to? When do we see this
to follow? Or is it some type of spontaneous value transition--yesterday I
valued biological pleasure but today I value social harmony?
On the evolution platypus(or the spiny anteater), the 4 levels provide
clarifying insight on the issue. A species or life can be viewed as a static
biological pattern of values and evolution as dynamic quality.However, he ends
the topic by stating that the explanation of life is a migration of static
patterns toward DQ. Is DQ a goal that life goes toward?
It seems to me that Life is a pattern of replication with static latches.
Dynamic quality improves the organism's ability to replicate the pattern or to
adapt the pattern to changing environments. Life is the pattern.......death
and extinction are just forms of pattern loss. It seems that the pattern's
continuence is the explanation of life(granted a bleak view). DQ and static Q
are the processes , not the goal.
Or are the journey and the goal one and the same?
Rog
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