> Platt: > No, Ham, Pirsigians do not believe rocks make conscious > evaluations. You have conflated atoms and rocks. They are > not the same. Ken Wilber makes the distinction clear: > atoms are wholes, rocks are heaps. Wholes are entities > like atoms, molecules and cells. They react to experience > according to their level, inorganically or biologically. > Rocks and other heaps like clouds, clothes and cars do > not react to experience.
[Ham] Since I don't wish to misrepresent the predominant belief system here, I'll defer to your interpretation and stand corrected. Rocks do not react to experience because they are heaps. (I don't know how my wife will react when she finds out that the stone in her engagement ring is a "heap", but I'm happy for you that Wilber has made this distinction so clear.) Determining whether an entity "experiences" or not is apparently a tricky matter for the MoQists. I wonder how Wilber classifies our planet Earth -- as a "whole", or as a whole with heaps? Is a human being one of the heaps, or can it also be considered a "whole" inasmuch as it reacts to experience? Notwithstanding Wilber's edification, perhaps we'd avoid a heap of trouble by sticking with Pirsig's original "patterns" and "levels" terminology. [Krimel] You don't have to worry about misrepresenting anything, Platt has done it for you. Like so much that is filtered through Platt, even Wilber gets distorted. Wilber borrows the term "holons" from Arthur Koestler. What he means by this is that pretty much everything is a "holon". Viewed from one angle it is a part and from another it is a whole. Atoms are heaps of subatomic particles and rocks are heaps of atoms. But rocks are also wholes and a mountain is a heap of rocks. This has nothing whatever to do with awareness, volition or responding to experience. But like Jesus said, when the blind lead the blind both will fall in a ditch, so y'all just walk on... 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/
