Krimel asked dmb: "How can some kind of undetectable all pervading awareness is not be supernatural?"
John said: ...I know how annoying an unanswered question can be. Maybe you should rephrase it. I think the "is not be" part is especially confusing. dmb says: The typo doesn't confuse me so much as the question itself. If the idea of inorganic preferences is predicated on the same empirical evidence as the laws of physics, then in what sense is it "undetectable"? Even more confusing is the main charge of supernaturalism. Again, if the idea of inorganic preferences is based on the observation of natural phenomenon, in what sense is that phenomenon "supernatural"? I can only conclude that that such questions are not genuine questions. In this case, I suppose it's a kind of rhetorical question. Its purpose is to ridicule, not elicit answers. [Krimel] I am sorry you think my question is silly and I do apologize for the typo. My proofreader has taken the decade off and she is accumulating a real backlog of words that need proofing. I will dock her pay for this one since focusing on the error seems to have distracted you from the actual question I meant to ask. It's entirely my bad. The question you are answering is interesting and related but I really should try to keep my questions simpler for you. You are addressing the issue of preference in the inorganic but my questions was about awareness. [dmb] In the early modern period, before the physical sciences had settled in the shape we take for granted today, the mechanical model had a rival. If history had moved a little differently in those early days, it's possible that today's physicists would be talking about the universe in organic, biological metaphors rather than natural law or cause and effect. One of the pre-Socratic philosophers even talked about metal's reaction to magnets in terms of its "life". I don't know if Pirsig was deliberately making a reference to that ancient text in using the metal filings around a magnet for an example of inorganic behavior, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was. In any case, such ideas have been around for a long time and modern science flirted with that model such that it really could have gone either way. The mechanical model and the organic model each have there advantages and disadvantages, I suppose. If women weren't locked out of the game, I'd bet my toolbox that the life-based model would have won out. [Krimel] I think I have tried to explain this to you several times but apparently not very well. I will try to be more clear this time. It seems that the pre-Socratics left enough fragments around to kick start just about any world view you care to mention. Whatever point of view is in charge at the moment or would like to be, can find a foundation and nostalgia in those fragments. I am sure you really know this but if you look across the broad sweep of history and prehistory you will see that the organic model has prevailed for most of it and if there has been flirtation, even infidelityit has been with mechanism. But it was just a passing fling that lasted from 1687 until 1905. That is the mechanical, Newtonian period from the publication of the Principia until Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. What is emerging from a century of make-up sex are probabilistic and systems views that are essential expansions and refinements in a more organic mold. But you capture the essence of the matter very well when you say: "If history had moved a little differently in those early days, it's possible that today's physicists would be talking about the universe in organic, biological metaphors rather than natural law or cause and effect." That really is the butterfly effect, a modern myth that even children understand. It nailed shut the coffin on the age of Newton and mechanism. If anything at all had been even a little bit different in those early days, today we would be talking about a very different world in very different terms. [dmb] Or think about it in terms of the animate and inanimate. The distinction is about what is self-moving and what isn't. Rocks don't move unless acted upon. The animating force is life. When the biological processes cease upon death, that movement disappears. It's childlike common sense that everybody knows. Just ask any old stiff. But that distinction doesn't really hold up much beyond common sense. Beyond the macro world, the difference gets pretty blurry. Ask a micro-biologist or bio-chemist where they would draw the line. And, except for some very cold spots, what in the universe doesn't move? If string theory is right, movement is all there is and its not the kind of motion that's given to simple laws either. [Krimel] Wow, you see the problem of drawing sharp lines between levels too! I get that. It's kind of like trying to draw a line between the animate and inanimate. Like fire is self moving and so are dust devils and tornados and ocean currents and clouds. These are all complex self organizing, self motivated system. All of those systems are in the end motivated by the flow of heat. When you get down to the molecular level not only heat of the arrangements of electrical charge comes into play and self organization ramps up a notch especially when those promiscuous carbon atoms start their own little "key parties" with strange sexy atom they brush up against. [dmb] It matters how we talk about these things. It matters which metaphors we choose. But they are just that. They're just different ways of thinking about what's known in experience. The same events occur in nature either way. The choice of metaphors and conceptualizations is going to be based on what works for what purpose and, obviously, the idea of inorganic preferences is supposed to serve the coherence of the MOQ. It's purpose is to unify the inorganic with the other three levels, where the expression of preferences can hardly be doubted. When the idea of inorganic preference is compared to the ideas that physicists themselves are producing these days, it's not all that weird. As a figure of speech, it's downright ordinary. "That walky-talky doesn't like the rain", I said to my son when he was four years old. He put the toy away. "Lawnmowers don't like old gasoline", I told my neighbor. He put fresh gas in it. I'm not saying that my refrigerator is in love with magnets, but you'd understand what was meant if I did. [Krimel] It really sounds here like you want to embrace Dennett's intentional stance. I think I have suggested this too you before as a way out of the corner you want to paint yourself into but maybe I was too obscure with that or maybe I put it in a way that you found toxic. But yeah, it really does matter what metaphors we use and why we use them. For example, you seem to be saying that preference is just a simplified way of talking but this comes back to my original question. Is "all pervading awareness" just a way of talking too? Because preference really seems to capture that. It is probably that I am slow witted but it seems that all your metaphors seem to point to a universe that is and has always been consciously aware. But that extends well beyond the "intentional stance" so surely you don't mean that. Maybe Pirsig does intend these terms to be a way of tying his levels together. But, and this is just me, it seems that what ties the levels together is static and dynamic quality. Two fundamental concepts that unify not only this particular metaphysics but any metaphysics. Maybe that's what makes them metaphysical terms. Yin and Yang, stability and change, continuous and discrete are properties that can be used to describe both the concrete and the abstract. They apply to observable phenomena and abstract conceptualizations. My real question would be why regress into animism when you have just invented such powerful explanatory tools? Most of the four year olds I know would want to know how you can tell what walkie talkies, lawnmowers and refrigerator like. Maybe they like rain and old gas because it gives them a chance to take a nap. Maybe refrigerators think magnets are a kind of refrigerator fungus that they get from standing too close to the stove. Do lawnmowers really sound all that happy when they are running? Perhaps those bursts of static the walkie talkie emit are expressions of disgust at what is being said through them. You are after all the leader of the Aw Gi Cult and far wiser than I but it seems that the metaphors you've elected are far more confusing than the ones you've rejected, even to a four year old and a simpleton. [dmb] That's how I see. The idea of inorganic preferences is about as undetectable as a lawnmower, is about as supernatural as a refrigerator magnet, and Krimel's question is not one that even a four year-old needs to ask. Oh, and by the way, this is at least the second time I answered your question that's not really a question. Maybe even the third time. Once would have been more than enough. You might not agree with these answers or even understand them but pretending I didn't answer is kind of silly. [Krimel] I am admittedly slow in these matters but I still don't see how the state of walkie talkies, lawnmowers and refrigerator tells us what they would prefer. Perhaps they are the way they are but really would prefer to be otherwise. Maybe their observable state tells us nothing of their inner preference. I know my behavior is often no indicator of my preferences. There are a great many causes and conditions that tend to interfere with and subvert my deep seated desires. I guess what I am getting at is how can observation ever tell us about preference much less awareness much less the extent to which either of them are pervasive? We certainly have had several similar conversations and you have proposed similar answers but like this one they are fraught with problems you continue to leave unaddressed. A wise man once said, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." It is one thing to cling to childish things and quite another to try to justify your metaphysic with them. _________________________________________________________________ HotmailR has ever-growing storage! 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