[Platt]
If I could do that I would be some kind of hero to the evolutionists.
[Arlo]
I am asking you to speculate. This is an important ramification of
the claim that "only man" responds to DQ. To restate.
If animals could respond to DQ in the past (DQ-animals), (1) what was
the nature of this ability? what could they do?, (2) was there ever
an overlap, a time when both DQ-animals and DQ-man walked the earth
together? Or did DQ-animals in North America "lose" their DQ-ness
when DQ-man appears in Africa? (3) was there ever a time when NOTHING
on the earth could respond to DQ? Before "man", was it always that
something, somewhere could respond to DQ? During the time of the
dinosaurs, for example, what was DQ-enabled? T-rex? Lemurs? Ferns?
(4) Extending that, before the era of animals, is your proposal that
"plants" could respond to DQ? If not, what? If so, what is the nature
of how those plants could "act" that they can no longer do? (5) When
"cats", to use one example, could respond to DQ (DQ-cats), what could
they do then that they can no longer do now? Again, speculate. Did
they have "free will" when they were DQ-cats? And, importantly (6)
why did DQ-animals lose their ability? If they could respond to DQ,
what made them stop? Is your assumption that humans could one day
"lose" the ability to respond to DQ? If not, why not?
Take a crack at any of these. Speculate. Guess. I don't think it'll
be easy, I think the absurdity of the claim that "only man" responds
to DQ is evident here. Again, if we consider that all patterns
respond to DQ, but do so only with a repertoire of constraints and
affordances allowed by their evolutionary level, we get a wholly
solid picture. There were no "DQ-cats" then and "Non-DQ-cats" now.
There were always "cats", and "cats" could always respond the same
way to DQ, the same way ten thousand years ago as today. With the
advent of the social level, certain animals (I break from Pirsig on
this, as I do think some primates and other species evidence
rudimentary social level patterning) gained a whole new repertoire of
responses, of which "man's" has been the most complex by far. With
the advent of the intellectual level, "man" again gained a whole new
repertoire of responses. But along the way, nothing "lost" the
ability to respond to DQ. Some things just gained new affordances,
amazing new repertoires of responses.
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