Hi Arlo
I think the below is spot on. And shows how the DQ concept can join
up the behviour of systems/processes across the inanimate/
animate divide, such that the sort of conscious life had
by human beings can be seen as just the our level
of constraint(impossible)/opportunity(possible) but
this emergence of form with new possibilities is a
continuous one since time=0.
Thanks
David M
[DM]
How would you describe more static responses.
[Arlo]
I'd say what we see as a "static pattern" is the amalgamation of many,
many responses to Dynamic Quality. Hence in my understanding, there is no
such thing as a "static response", there is only (from a larger vantage
point) highly probable Dynamic responses.
[DM]
To some extent jumping off the hot stove is a habitual/patterned form of
behaviour and so is SQ. I thinks all experiences and processes have a
DQ/SQ mix.
[Arlo]
I think the "pattern of behavior" we see is a highly probable response to
DQ. But I would also say that the probability of that response derives
from the static patterns that make up the respondent pattern in question.
This is partly what I meant, and Pirsig touches on, when I said that "how"
something responds is DQ is both enabled and constrained by the totality
of responses in its particular repertoire. Humans (and cats) "jump off the
hot stove" because they are made up of biological patterns that have a
high probability to find that situation "low-quality".
Consider this. A person with a nerve "disorder" that can't feel a thing,
has no sense of touch, will still suffer biological deterioration when
sitting on a hot stove, even if no signal ever reaches the brain to signal
a "jump"). The cells, muscles, bones, etc. in this individual still
respond to this low-quality situation in highly probable ways, but the
"higher response" of "jumping off" (made possible by the possession of a
central nervous system) will not occur. That is, on the lower-level of
biological complexity, the cells still respond to Dynamic Quality, but in
this case responses from a higher level repertoire are not available.
Assuming no social mitigation (a friend yelling "you're sitting on a hot
stove!", only when the biological damage becomes severe enough to register
in the brain from other channels (loss of blood, e.g.) will higher-level
responses become available.
So to this end, yes I agree, all experience is a mix of DQ/SQ, although I
would say that all experience of DQ is constrained (and enabled) by SQ. A
"cat" repertoire of responses is both made possible and constrained by the
static patterns of which it is formed. The same goes for "man". The same
goes for an amoeba. The same goes for an atom.
This is why I do not see the cosmos as "dead", either in the sense that it
needs "man" to observe it or in the sense that evolution for all things
but "man" has ceased. How sad that Platt's view seems to be one that
should all "men" disappear, that would be the end of DQ, nothing would
ever evolve, the cosmos would practically "die". "Cats would still be
cats", he says. Having "lost" their ability to respond to DQ, as have all
other things, a cosmos without man becomes "dead" or "eternally stagnant".
On the other hand, a cosmos where DQ is pervasive, where on every level
responses to DQ continue to happen, new evolution is always possible, as
much today as a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago. Should
"man" disappear, Dynamic Quality will continue to push the force of
evolution to greater and greater ends.
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