[Platt]
These patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic
Quality. Only a living being can do that. (Lila, 13)
[Arlo]
Yeah, I know you love this isolated little quote. Too bad when you
critically look at it, it makes no sense. What Pirsig should have
said is "only a human being can respond to Dynamic Quality with a
repertoire of responses ranging from inorganic to intellectual". And
since we know intellectual responses require social mediation, we are
right back and your poorly construed "experience of red is like the
experience of DQ-- strictly individual".
Again, except that it is not.
Since you love that little quote though, here are the unanswered
questions you've avoided the last few times you drummed this snippet out.
1) Was there ever a time when nothing existed that could respond to
DQ? Or was DQ always available to "something"?
2) Immediately before the appearance of "man" in the historical
timeline, speculate as to what was responding to DQ? More than one
thing? Several? Describe some ways you see from the historical
evidence of something acting "in response to DQ" that those things
can no longer do?
3) We know "man" appears on the African continent, did "whatever was
responding to DQ" on the North American continent suddenly "stop"?
Was there an overlap between "man" and "something else" in their
ability to respond to DQ?
Add to this that the "living being" is every much comprised of "sets
of static patterns", and so if it (as a set of static patterns) can
respond to DQ, why can't other sets of static patterns do so?
No.. much better to say that "all patterns respond to DQ, but do so
with an ability derived and constrained by their place on the
evolutionary hierarchy". A carbon atom responds to DQ, but it does so
with a very constrained set of possible responses deriving from its
very nature. A cat has a much more sophisticated repertoire of
responses, but it too stops short of the possibility of its wielding
socially or intellectually derived responses.
In the case of "experiencing red", a feral child would share (more or
less) the same experience of this as a wolf or other similarly ocular
biological being (setting aside actual differences in ocular
responses to wavelengths in different animals). In this case, the
"living being" is responding to "red" solely within the biological
level, and the responses made are (in addition to being made possible
by biology) limited to biological responses.
An enculturated child, however, learns the vast repertoire of
symbolicly mediated responses to associate with this experience.
"Red" becomes anger, or blood, or war, or love, or hot, or spicy, or
danger, or sexy. As the child moves through its socially-mediated
landscape, its own unique but still mediated experiences as a
biological agent in a social milieu, it develops it own personal
quirks surrounding this experience. But the thing to remember is that
these are possible only via the appropriation of the collective
consciousness of the beings surrounding culture. Social responses
(and latter intellectual responses) to this experience is derived
from this particular interplay of "unique bounded organism" and
"collective consciousness".
Intellectual responses derive from these social responses, in the
case of science, by examining the specific properties of certain
wavelengths, considering how this is turned into information between
the "eye" and the "brain", why certain cultural associations are made
in certain regions, etc. But in this case too, this is built upon a
social foundation. Your experience of "red" is "strictly individual"
only in the biological sense (and even then we'd have to talk about
the collective work of cells, nerves, neurons, etc.). In any greater
way, you experience of "red" is an interplay between your own unique
bounded experiences and the cultural glasses you've inherited;
glasses that not only constrain how you see "red", but make it
possible to see in the first place.
I could write a bit more here about the "green flash of the sun", but
maybe another time.
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