Hi Matt, nice to hear from you
Matt Kundert wrote:
> I have to admit, I haven't been following any other titled threads aside from
> the ones I'd already thrown my hat into. I don't have the time or energy to
> stay abreast of everybody's conversations, so I have to plead ignorance to
> the context of this one. I only saw this in the archives (yes, yes, I'm an
> egomanic who searches his name in the archives to see who's talking to--or
> about--me: sue me).
I'm just as guilty. :-P I used to have a flag appearing on posts whenever my
name was mentioned in them, but since I moved to IMAP mail, that filter doesn't
work anymore. I have to bug the Mozilla Thunderbird guys to implement it, or do
it myself.
> - Phhhff, guys, guys, I was just kidding. Don't take it so literally.
>
> Matt: Reminds me of Kierkegaard's comment about Hegel that if he had just
> written "this was all a thought-experiment" at the end of his books, he
> would've been the greatest philosopher who ever lived, rather than a joke.
>
> Our difference is that I don't think Pirsig is giving up, I think he's not
> only making a strategic choice, but the best choice. I think he saw the
> example of Hegel, and thought Kierkegaard was right. Which is to say Pirsig
> chose pragmatism as opposed to Platonism.
>
> For instance, when you talk about these rules being built into the fabric of
> reality. I think you're right, that is something we should all confess, but
> I think there's two ways to do it: 1) suppose that these rules are in a
> language that we can translate and eventually speak (the metaphor of Nature
> as a Book that we are cracking the code to) or 2) that our "rules" and our
> "language" are things _we_ use to make our way about the world, i.e. reality
> could give a shit how we speak or function--Reality doesn't have a language
> that we can crack. The first option suggests that we can represent reality
> correctly, thus breeding a separate field of inquiry, sometimes called
> "metaphysics," whose sole purpose is to define the criteria for knowing
> whether a person is representing reality correctly or not, as opposed to just
> dealing better or worse with reality. The second options suggests that
> dealing better or worse with reality is all we need to worry about.
Yes, you said that before, and I think I agreed. But the devil in me always
seems to creep out eventually.
This was a good analogy though. I think I just might be able to remember it.
> Pirisg can seem to be saying that with Man there is no Reality, but that's
> not it. What we call an "object" (be they material or otherwise) is what
> Pirsig might refer to as a "value-cluster" or a "locus of evaluative
> gravity." For instance, a rock is a locus of inorganic evaluative gravity.
> I prefer just rock, but the point is that every locus that we can
> differentiate does its own valuing, so that other rocks are evaluated by my
> first rock, just as we evaluate the rock.
>
> The crux of our difference, and I side with Pirsig, is that of
> usefulness--you seem to think that to judge our metaphysical meanderings by
> only usefulness is to not "trust" our meanderings, to basically caveat
> everything with a big "Well, maybe." I think on the one hand, that's
> basically right, but on the other hand, I don't think it has anything to do
> with trust--we trust a meandering, or scientific theory, or a religious
> explanation all by the same criteria: its usefulness to our experience of the
> world. Now, I'm supposing you have another category apart from usefulness in
> mind, something like "correctness." The question for you, as opposed to me
> (since I've dropped the extra category), is what the criteria are for
> detecting correctness as opposed to usefulness. If you don't have them, you
> can always claim that civilization is still working on them. However, if you
> stipulate that we'll never have these criteria for correctness (as I believe
> you suggested as much earlier), but that shouldn't stop us from striving for
> correctness, then what you still need to further do is explain how striving
> for correctness is different from striving for usefulness. Pirsig laid his
> cards out when he called DQ "betterness," as opposed to "correctness."
Ok, but even *if* I let go of aiming for correctness. I still think the MoQ is
much more useful than what Pirsig gives it credit for, provided he lets the
social level expand to smaller societies than human.
*And* you say that DQ is betterness as opposed to correctness. Then it's not
very far-fetched to claim that SQ (since it *is* opposed to DQ) has quite a few
similarities with correctness.
> Matt
>
> BTW, your explanation of the dilemma dodged the dilemma, mainly because there
> isn't really any dilemma to solve. Your explanation that "atoms are not
> societies because they are not held together by social value" is tautological
> because you basically said that atoms aren't societies because they are
> inorganic static patterns, whereas societies are societies because they are
> social static patterns.
I didn't quite dogde it as much as perhaps showing an inability to explain my
understanding of the levels. I'll try again:
Inorganic value are what we usually mean by "the forces of nature", gravity,
electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear force. An atom is held together
by
a combination of those forces, so we don't need any other explanation than
inorganic value to explain why it sticks together.
Biology uses the molecules created by the inorganic level to make a new type of
value, the senses. The most basic, and oldest, senses are based on the
3-dimensional fitness of different molecules. If a molecule fits well with the
molecules of a sensory organ, like a tongue, it tastes good and is likely to be
fit for use in that body. That 3-dimensional fitness is also the basis for the
self-replicating DNA molecule. However, biological value are senses, it's not
more than that. An ant *is* not a biological pattern. It *uses* biological
value
to decide what is edible.
Social value is the goodness of being together. It starts with two molecules
with a good 3-d fit. If those two molecules work well together, we call it
symbiosis, but if the fit is too static, we may call it a crystal. A good
example of symbiosis is the cell Pirsig describes in Lila. A cell isn't held
together by gravity, it falls apart when it dies. It's also not held together
by
biological value, that's just how it once started. I'm sure the parts of the
cell could let go of eachother and find better "tasting" stuff outside, but it
doesn't, because it's held together by social value. Just as humans keep paying
their tax instead of moving to Monaco which may seem fancier at first glance.
> The argument Pirsig was responding to, which I think
> you evaded by merely reiterating the definitions of the categories (and oddly
> suggesting that ants are not held together by gravity, when everything is
> held together by gravity),
False. It's not gravity that keeps an ant together. When an ant dies, the
gravity is still there, but the ant falls apart gradually. Even if it's not
eaten by other animals, it would eventually fall apart into molecules. Gravity
isn't holding the ant together, it's making its very best to reunite the parts
of the ant with the earth.
So, inorganic value is not what's holding the ant together. And biological
value
is just what brings stuff together. Social value is what keeps them together.
It's a completely new type of good, i.e. a new level.
> is that, for instance, if you watch enough Nature
> programs on TV, they will regularly refer to "animal societies." The
> question is: how far does the analogy between animal interactional forms and
> human interactional forms extend? Pirsig's right, you can extend "social"
> all the way down to atoms by analogy and a little imagination ("The electrons
> and th e neutrons and protons are all part of a community called the
> 'atom'..."), but why would you?
I don't either. And I don't use analogy and imagination. I'm looking for the
unique type of goodness of each level. If an observation can't be explained
using lower levels, there's a new type of value at play.
> What Pirsig doesn't do, that I've never be
> satisfied with, is explain with greater clarity how he differentiates the
> social from biological, human organization from animal. In this short
> section, he basically kinda' shakes his head at it, but why _specifically_
> are ants not social? I think the answer is language, but Pirsig's never
> really pointed at differentiating criteria (at least, that I can remember,
> and I would think within the last almost eight years, I would've read
> _someone_ having remembered and quoted them).
I would very much like to discuss this in great detail with you if you're up to
it. I've also never been very satisfied with how Pirsig differentiates social
value from biological, which is why I've spent quite some time during the last
10 years trying to figure it out for myself. I wrote an essay in the beginning
of that 10 year period which I still think is pretty valid.
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/
