Hello again Marsha:
I'm sorry to be so slow at responding; blame it on the Canadian cold
weather.
David:
For the record the computer metaphor I speak of is found at pages 150 - 152
of Lila. When will someone publish indexed versions of ZAMM and Lila? The
underlined words in the above passage quoted by Bo are what I think he and I
see as false. Pirsig is trying to make the point that the four levels of
spovs are independent of each other. I'm not sure I'm right but it seems
that he believes in some kind of alternate mental universe that exists in
parallel with our universe. He's in good company: Plato, Augustus and
Descartes to name a few, but just because he can't see the physical
connection between the top three levels doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Perhaps this is wrong but I don't think anyone has a problem seeing the
direct connection between the inorganic and biological level spovs. But for
some reason they miss the connection between the biological, social and
intellectual levels.
One example given by Pirsig to illustrate the independence of these levels
is suicide, which is supposed to represent a conflict between the biological
and intellectual levels. However in a non-mental (strictly physical)
universe, intellect is a biological function like breathing or digestion. So
suicide is a bunch of brain cells trying to impose their will to cut a bunch
of wrist cells and the conflict is biology vs biology not intellect vs
biology.
I think he believes in a mental universe because at the bottom of page 151
he says:
"Certainly the novel cannot exist in the computer without a parallel
pattern of voltages to support it. But that does not mean that the novel is
an expression or property of those voltages. It doesn't have to exit in any
electronic circuits at all. It can also reside in magnetic domains on a disk
of a drum or a tape, but again it is not composed of magnetic domains nor is
it possessed by them. It can reside in a notebook but it is not composed of
or possessed by the ink and paper. It can reside in the brain of a
programmer, but even here it is neither composed of this brain nor possessed
by it."
The root of the fallacy is his failure to realize that the novel only exists
physically in the brains of the writer and readers. The pattern of voltages,
magnetic domains and ink and paper representations of the novel are only
symbols and have no meaning until a living brain decodes them. It may seem a
small point and is certainly open to question and argument but it has
implications for the MoQ in that it might ultimately (horror of horrors)
define DQ.
Marsha responded:
I had my computer training at a technical college, I understand
>on & off switches and machine language. Cobol was my language of poetry,
>but I debugged many a program reading computer dumps and seeking out
>what was in a particular register and location.
David:
You are in a unique position to realize the relationship between the levels
of symbol used in a computer. I was tipped off by my late brother who could
code in binary the way most of us write in words. But here I'm interested in
the final conversion where the light energy from a screen or reflected light
from the page physically enters the eyes and by the machinations of the mind
becomes meaning.
Marsha:
>Thank you for the opportunity to read this portion of Lila
>again. They are important pages.
>
>First lets agree we're ignoring the nature of the patterns and we're
>going to talk about the referents: brains, novels, individual,
>voltages, ink, paper, the MOQ levels, and the relationship between
>them. Right?
David:
I'm good.
Marsha:
- I understand the static world of patterns and levels
>to represent the Buddhist concept of conventional reality, the human
>sandbox.
David:
A question, are you talking about the sand sorting metaphor for the world in
ZAMM or should I be reading something on Buddhist cosmology? If so, can you
recommend something simple?
>
Marsha:
>The individual is an ever-changing, collection of interrelated and
>interconnected, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual, static
>patterns of value responding to Dynamic Quality.
David:
Absolutely! Are you reading my mind?
Marsha:
The different
>'individual' collections of patterns are as alike as snowflakes.
>
>On the few pages sited, there are a number of different problems
>discussed. Are you specifically addressing the fact that a pattern,
>its function, is discreet to its level, but required all underlying
>levels for its evolution?
David:
No I hadn't considered that incongruent. Is there something special about
it?
Marsha:
A brain to me is a biological
>pattern. I do not equate brain and mind. Do you see it differently?
David:
Agreed, brain is a biological spov.
Agreed, brain and mind are not equal, but the way I see it brain is the
largest organ in the set of organs that make up the mind. I agree with
Epicurus, "The soul doesn't see through the eye, as through a window. If
that were so the soul would see better without the eye. It is the eye itself
that sees."
The way I see it the sense organs are the parts of the mind that experience
DQ. In my way of seeing things mind and body are with minor exceptions
synonymous.
Marsha:
>Where, specifically is your discomfort?
David:
Pirsig seems to be saying that novels don't physically exist, that it's an
intellectual idea. Poof, it's here and poof, it's gone. Well, my problem
with that is that eventually something has to push something. Ideas have to
be physical if they're going to affect behaviour. Ideas have to be physical
if they're going to push muscles. No one is buying Descartes' idea that the
pineal gland allows mental to affect physical anymore.
Marsha:
I think science is in the room.
> Hmmm. If I'm correct, and science is in the room, let me add a word or
two.
The MoQ, for me, is a world-view to which science is subordinate. Science
is a subject/object subset of the MoQ world-view and cannot be used to
evaluate or explain it.
>
David:
Not physics; metaphysics. My question to you, Bo, Ham and anyone is, is
Quality physical? Forget S/OM and especially subjects, science demands a
strictly objective metaphysics. Is the MoQ that metaphysics? I think you and
your associates are the people to chew this idea over with. -david swift
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