Krimel said to dmb: I think the point you are missing here is that it is not so much chains of causality as webs of causality. Because causal chains are interconnected they influence each other. And it is not a three dimensional nest it is at least four dimensional. Frankly, I agree that Pirsig does, "...re-conception of physical laws as extremely persistent patterns of preference and his re-conception of natural selection as the accumulated effect of countless spur of the moment choices." ...Determinism is not lost in any of this. It is just that determinism does not produce prediction as was once thought. Chaotic behavior is perfectly deterministic even reductionistic with no loss of freedom. ...I don't see much difference in what we are both saying here, which is very odd to me.
dmb replies: The disagreement here is not really related to whether or not we're talking about three-dimensional chains or four-dimensional webs but causality itself. Long story short, we both subscribe to the general notion that everything exists in relation to everything else and everything happens within that context. But I'm saying that these relations are not causal. They're volitional. This is why I mentioned the conversion from physical laws to patterns of preference. Here, Pirsig describes the very same event, the very same data if you will, without any reference to causality. So, you see, there is a huge difference. Our ideas about causality, that is to say common sense ideas among educated adults, extend to the edge of the universe and back to the big bang. So, in a sense we're talking about two difference universes, w whole different way of seeing everything. That's why the sock analogy works so well. We still exist in relation to the sock, but oh what a difference that relation is. _________________________________________________________________ Change the world with e-mail. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ChangeWorld 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/
