Hi DMB
dmb says: For whatever its worth, I do usually read your posts and, based on
your recent claim that the inside of a cell is a society, figured you'd
disagree with me on this. And yes, of course I have thought about what the
social level is. And yes, I do take Pirsig's word on what Pirsig means by the
term "social". If we extend the term down to the biological level it no
longer has the same meaning and we've only erased a useful distinction.
Hang on. You're talking as if the distinction was useful in the first place, but
I claim it's not. I have spent quite a few hours thinking about why, and the
result is in my essay.
I'd
say this is relevant intellectually, if that's what you mean by
metaphysically relevant. I mean, these descriptions and distinctions are just
Pirsig's way of carving up experience. They're not supposed to be absolute or
objectively true or any such thing. But they do have to be coherent and
consistent with the MOQ as a whole and I think that expanding the definition
of the social to include the non-human world is destructive of that coherence
and consistency. If cells counted as social, for example, we might expect
intellect to emerge from a cell and it otherwise makes the system fairly
ridiculous.
Regarding metaphysical relevance, I explain what I mean with that term in the
"Discreteness" section of the essay if you're interested.
Regarding "ridiculous", I thought that a metaphysical system that claimed to be
discrete and dependent, but at closer examination turned out not to fulfill any
of those, was rather ridiculous. And there's where the essay starts. I claim
that if you really want to make it discrete and dependent, the result is the
levels I describe in the essay.
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/
