Krimel said: The MoQ does add a metaphysical underpinning for evolutionary theory. Both are about how stability arises and persists in the face of dynamic change. Or to put it more boldly how Order arises from Chaos. This is the most basic and fundamental theme in both the Mythos and the Logos. The reason evolutionary theory is so pervasive and crosses so many disciplines is that it addresses this theme. This is what gives evolutionary theory its elegance, beauty and power. I am always disappointed when Chapter 11 comes up because in it Pirsig shows he does not appreciate the power of evolutionary thinking nor how the MoQ really serves to enhance it. His focus on betterness and acceptance of a teleological account of evolution contribute mightily to keeping the MoQ on the fringe.
dmb says: Although you've not said so explicitly this time, I can see that you are once again equating DQ with Chaos. That construes DQ as confusion, disorder and randomness. This is approximately the opposite of what Pirsig says about it. It is not "arbitrary or capricious", he says. It's the basis of the order and harmony of the static ordered world. I'd also object because the term more or less refers to a disorganized physical state while DQ is not a state of things but an event, an experience. [Krimel] I said that if one insists on equating DQ with Quality, or as I prefer to think of it: if you throw Quality out of the MoQ; that can only make sense in the sense that Order is a subset of Chaos. But to say that something is chaotic does not mean that is confused, or disordered. Nor is it necessarily arbitrary for capricious. The Gulf Stream is a chaotic system. In 'Islands in the Stream' Hemmingway talks about sailing between Key West and Havana drinking gin and tonic. If, on each trip, he threw a gin bottle overbroad there is no way to predict where that bottle might wash up on shore or where it might eventually come to rest on the ocean floor. The spot on Jupiter is thought to be a storm that has been swirling chaotically for at least 300 years. [dmb] And this is where the betterness comes in. Its better to be off the hot stove, for example. The idea here is that DQ is a sense that guides and pulls or pushes in a direction that will improve the situation. This way of sensing the overall quality of the situation, positive or negative, is at the cutting edge of every moment and is the basis on which we select what to notice within the overall situation and then these noticed features are organized according to a conceptual framework, the categories of language and all that. [Krimel] Language and conceptions are not factors in what you are describing. We automatically, without conception, constantly evaluate the valence of our surroundings. We are attracted to some things and repealed by others. The autonomic nervous system and the midbrain handle this kind of immediate processing. The ANS has basically two options: it can speed things up or slow them down. Like most of the animal kingdom we respond to the world around us mainly be becoming either more static or more dynamic depending on the positive or negative character of our perception. As you say we "select" what to notice but again the selection is mostly automatic. We attend to change. Like most animals we have an orienting response such that we attend to change, or you could call it the dynamic character of the environment. Static patterns fade into the background. At ticking clock, cars whooshing by on the highway, the chirping of crickets or the love cries for frogs after a rain all fade from awareness. It's called habituation. Even babies do this. One of the ways psychologists explore the minds of infants is to note what they habituate and what they orient towards. Conceptualization and language depend not so much on immediate experience as on the ability to compare the immediate with the past. [dmb] In this cutting edge moment, the first thing you know is a generalized feeling tone, a sense of the quality of the situation. As we see in the language of radical empiricism this is the pure experience prior to the distinction even between experiencer and what's being experienced, between subject and object, between your burning ass and the hot stove. You immediately know its bad even before you know what or why. And this is the sense in which there is a teleology. Its not that some final outcome has already been decided and everything inevitable moves toward this end. Its just that things move in a general direction, although at different levels, in different contexts. [Krimel] We do constantly make instant evaluations of our environment. That is kind of a requirement for staying alive. It is so important in fact that it is mostly hardwired and automatic. Do you notice how even your own words above point in the direction of probability and uncertainty. As I keep trying to tell you a Nobel prize winner says we have a built in sense of probability like our sense of time and space. We can sense shifts in probability based on different levels and contexts. And I really can't resist reminding you that James claims that conception arises from perception which arises from sensation. [dmb] I mean betterness in philosophy isn't the same as betterness in hunting, love-making or rock music. Vultures and I have very different ideas about what's better for dinner and yet we DO both have our preferences and we both act upon them. [Krimel] It really is amusing that you have resorted to trying to sell "betterness" as a technical philosophical term. It isn't even a real word. To the extent that it is a word, it means something like slightly better than better. [dmb] Can you think of anything that does not move in the direction of betterness, within its own terms I mean? [Krimel] That would be a bit like to understand what it is like to be a bat. I can conceive of what betterness might be for me but to consider what betterness might be for a vulture the best I can do is imagine what would be better for me if I was a vulture. The fact that I can do this what Tomasello argues is THE major evolutionary advance that makes our species what it is. We can take other points of view. As James says, we can see ourselves as sometimes subject and sometimes objects. Krimel said: ...the more I read of Eastern thinking the more I see that like western thinking there are factions and subtexts and internal arguments and that any characterization of "Eastern Thinking" is as much an over simplification as talking about "Western Thinking". Both are rich enough and diverse enough to resist being lump together as one entity. dmb says: Yea, I've heard objections like that before. The point would be more worth making, I suppose, if somebody used such broad categories to make absolutist claims or assert universal truths or whatever. But there's nothing wrong with generalizations. They're neither more nor less useful than any other abstraction. And since Pirsig's work is a fusion of Eastern and Western philosophies, you'll have to tolerate or even (gasp!) use these terms. [Krimel] OK I'll buy that if we can agree that the fusion Pirsig creates is between Lao Tsu and Darwin. 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/
