Hi SA And Matt, this connects pretty tightly to the "What is metaphysics..." thread to feel free to comment. But perhaps it's too MoQ-specific for your taste Matt?
Heather Perella wrote: > Magus: >> In the Paul Turner letter >> > (http://www.moq.org/forum/Pirsig/LetterFromRMPSept2003.html) >> he tries to >> put arbitrary limits to the levels according to >> their "usefulness" whatever that is. >> I don't consider a resulting system from such level >> definitions a >> metaphysics, it's rather a lack of definitions. This >> is one of the >> reasons I started the "What is a metaphysics to you" >> thread. > > > SA: I'm not arguing against you. I don't know what > you mean here. Could you elaborate more? Ouch, that's a pretty big one, but I'll try. In the "What is metaphysics..." thread, we talked much about what a metaphysics *is*. But we didn't talk much about how it works. When we talk about how the MoQ works, we do it in statements like: Biological patterns depend on inorganic patterns. Inorganic patterns value inorganic value. etc. And if we really mean that our reality work according to such statements, we must also confess that these rules are somehow built into the fabric of that reality. A biological pattern isn't killed by someone else if the inorganic patterns it depends on are removed, it just die implicitly. Nobody is sitting next to every quality event to decide if this and that event is biological, inorganic or whatever. But that's exactly the feeling I get when I read some of the Paul Turner letter, and the same feeling I get from much post-Lila writing from Pirsig. Take something like: "There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social" down into the biological with the assertion that, for example, ants are social, but I have argued that this extends the meaning to a point where it is useless for classification. I said that even atoms can be called societies of electrons and protons. And since everything is thus social, why even have the word?" Who are we (or Pirsig for that matter) to say where to draw some arbitrary line between social and biological patterns? And to draw that line according to some "usefulness for classification"? The only classifications we need are the levels, nothing else. Then why try to force some mapping from those levels to the old obsolete classification? I think that Pirsig, after writing Lila, have been faced with some pretty difficult dilemmas regarding the MoQ, such as the one described in the quote above. But he doesn't bother to investigate it further, he just gives up and starts talking about usefulness. But in doing that, he also admits that there *is* someone sitting beside every single quality event to decide what level it is. There is no more metaphysics in the fabric of our reality, just a loose explanation about how the reality *may* work in *many* circumstances. If he had investigated these dilemmas, if he had *trusted* the metaphysics he had discovered, he would have been able to find much better answers, and in doing so, discover so much more about the nature of the levels. But instead, he just said: - Phhhff, guys, guys, I was just kidding. Don't take it so literally. BTW, the dilemma in the quote above is very simple to solve. Atoms are not societies because they are not held together by social value, but by inorganic value. On the other hand, ants are not held together by inorganic value, there's no gravity, electromagnetism etc. involved. They are also not held together by biological value, if it were, the ant finding food wouldn't tell the others about it but just stay there and eat it. It's simply a textbook example of a social pattern. Magnus Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
