Thanks very much Steve for your answer to my
question --Is there anyone that
contends that "the lines between levels" are not fuzzy
boundaries? -- I'd like to comment on the paragraphs
from Pirsig that you quote. I assume that the matter
in question has been exhaustively debated here and I
apologize if I am repeating arguments which others may
have already presented.
Fuzzy boundaries between classes or categories are
usually considered more cumbersome to deal with, than
discrete, well defined, clear-cut boundaries. Actually
the opposite seems to hold, fuzzy boundaries can make
our life much easier when confronted with the
subtleties of classification. I think the case of "the
four levels of static patterns of quality" is a case
in point, as I expect to show in the following.
I'd like to center my arguments around three
key-words of that Pirsig quote: 'exhaustive',
'discrete' and 'controlling'. As to the first one:
exhaustive:
"In this plain of understanding static patterns of
value are divided into four systems: inorganic
patterns, biological patterns, social
patterns and intellectual patterns. They are
exhaustive. That's all there are."
That's quite straightforward. All classifications
aspire to be exhaustive. If we take a set containing
as members things we know, or we presume to know, we
can divide them in any number of sub-sets, so that
'all there are' are members of one sub-set or another.
As Pirsig well says: "This classification of
patterns is not very original". Exhaustiveness , or
rather, the presumption of it, is an implicit feature
of classifying.
The problems in classifications usually come to
the surface when something new appears, some thing
that was not contained in the original universal set.
It is the problem posed for instance by Artificial
Life to a classification of things into "alive" and
"not alive". Pirsig must have been well aware of the
trap posed by unexpected new entities, because he
deals extensively with the platypus issue. The problem
was not in the poor bird that choose not to behave
according to the scientist's intentions but in the
classification itself.
The precedent makes difficult to understand his
insistence on the second key-word 'discrete', as when
he writes:
" This classification of patterns is not very
original, but the
Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them
that is unusual. It says
they are not continuous. They are discrete. They
have very little to do with one another. "
This, to me at least, is puzzling. By assuming that
the said levels are not continuous, one implies that
any pattern whichever has to be " this <or> that";
either biological <or> inorganic, discarding a priori
the possibility that something may crop up which is
'in between' both levels. (The reason for stressing
the <or> : an innocent looking little word that can
play havoc with the most sophisticated intellectual
systems)
Puzzling, because it means falling back into the
Aristotelian notion of a definition in which something
is defined as a member of a class 'if and only if ' it
shares with other members a permanent set of
properties that can be listed and checked. Pirsig
deals extensively in Z&AMM on the traps presented by
the Aristotelian view then, why to reintroduce old
Aristo through the back door?
A possible answer may lie in this other quote
from Lila:
"The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle
pieces that we would like to think all fit together
somehow, but that in fact never do. There are always
some pieces like platypi that don't fit and we can
either ignore these pieces or we can give them silly
explanations or we can take the whole puzzle apart and
try other ways of assembling it that will include more
of them. When one takes the whole ill-shaped,
misfitting structure of a subject-object explained
universe apart and puts it back together in a
value-centered metaphysics, all kinds of orphaned
puzzle pieces fit beautifully that never fit before."
Is it possible that Pirsig got carried away by
his enthusiasm and substituted 'fit beautifully' with
'fit perfectly'? Beauty and perfection are not quite
the same. In a perfect system everything fits in its
proper place; but we humans have long learnt that
better to leave perfection to the gods and deal
instead with imperfect intellectual systems that
better suit our limitations as sentient beings.
All the more puzzling to me because I don't
quite see why this notion of discrete levels is really
needed. It constrains the MOQ unnecessarily(in my very
humble opinion.
Pirsig goes on saying:
" Although each higher level is built on a
lower one it
is not an extension of that lower level. Quite the
contrary. The higher
level can often be seen to be in opposition to the
lower level, dominating
it, controlling it where possible for its own
purposes"
In a hierarchical structure a higher level might very
well be "in opposition to a lower one, dominating and
controlling it" without the need for clear-cut,
discrete lines of separation between levels. Think of
an industrial organization where the managerial level
may be in opposition to the manual workers level,
dominating it and controlling it; the fact that in the
organization we may find a number of persons that are
not "this <or>that" does not hinder the managers at
all in pursuing their plans; no one thinks of the
secretaries of the bosses, the tea-ladies or the
accountants, as acting against the managerial level
aims. The fact that their position is not clearly
defined in Aristotelian terms might make them feel
uncomfortable whenever there is a strike, but that's
about all of it.
What if someone finds patterns that share some
properties with the members of one level and other
properties with the members of another level? Some
pattern that is inorganic in some features but
biological in others? Or, more generally, what if the
separations between the four levels were fuzzy
boundaries? Would that be threatening to the MOQ? I'm
posing this as questions because, given my ignorance
of MOQ, I don't feel myself qualified to answer them.
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