[Andre]
Hi Arlo,I would like to know where that 'suggestion' of Pirsig comes
from. Is there a specific page number in either ZMM or Lila?
[Arlo]
The passage Platt uses to justify his claim is from LILA, "These
patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality.
Only a living being can do that." Platt's justification for his
interpretation (as he wrote in a post) is that this quote is "stated
in a context of human beings".
Taking Pirsig literally (despite Platt's claim of "context") would
still allow the perception to DQ to continue at the biological level
and up. But still, IMO, it is one of the more troubling (and
ultimately illogical and ahistorical) elements of Pirsig's ideas. I
would say a much better (a more integrated) idea would be to say
"only a living being can respond to DQ with a repertoire of responses
enabled and constrained by its biological boundedness". Taking
Platt's context into account, we could say "Only a human being can
respond to DQ with a repertoire of responses made possible by her/his
participation in the social and intellectual levels".
Only a human can respond to DQ "intellectually", this would make more
sense MOQ-wise. (Although I still have troubles with that, as I'd
allow very rudimentary intellectual responses to describe some
primate/mammalian species (such as dolphins, perhaps, or gorillas)).
Said this way, a cat can respond to DQ "biologically" (as we see
everyday), and a carbon atom continues to respond to DQ "inorganically".
In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense to consider the levels as
"adverbs" to describe particular responses to DQ. Thus the "inorganic
level" is the level where patterns respond to DQ "inorganically". The
social level is the level where patterns respond to DQ "socially". Etc.
I'd also argue that seen this way, each level becomes an ecology of
interacting individual patterns, and it is FROM this collective
activity that higher levels of patterns emerge. Thus from any focal
view of the cosmos we would see (define) "individual patterns" and
see the "collective activity" from which the patterns on a higher
focal level emerge.
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