Hello Mark, [Mark speaking to Dan] Yes, it is impossible to posses Quality as I understand it, things can express Quality however, and as such I talk about the appearance of Quality. I am not sure if you agree with this.
You accept the premises imposed by your statement of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary history. You then operate within that acceptance. So, let's look at what this means. Evolution dictates that what is currently present is the result of the interactions between the outside environment, and the individual species. [Mary] >From a cause and effect perspective, I suppose, but there is a question being begged here. Do you see what it is? [Mark] With regard to MoQ, we would then take the levels to be an individual species as an analogy. Is this a correct interpretation of your presumption? [Mary] No, and if you do not see why I say so, feel free to ask. I cannot go into all of this in one post. [Mark] The selective force is then Quality instead of "Natural selection", which selects between all possible levels to present us at this time with the four levels. The pressures behind the survival of these levels is that they progress towards dynamic quality better than any other configuration. [Mary] Again, no, so call me an asshole now. :) [Mark] Remember that biological evolution requires competition for a limited amount or resources. Otherwise things would not change. [Mary] Emphatically no, and this time I will tell you why. Species will change whether there is selective pressure or not. Changes will occur seemingly unbidden. Given our limited current state of knowledge, the most honest thing we can say is that we do not understand the mechanism inspiring biological evolutionary change, if indeed there even is anything systematic about it at all. The capacity for random change is the only necessary precondition. Most biological change is counterproductive, not for the better, and thus likely not replicated into the next population to any great extent. However, this is not a given. There are many cases of counterproductive or neutral biological evolutionary changes that are indeed replicated in quantity into succeeding generations. Why are there type one diabetics, for example? No one knows why. No one knows by what mechanism mutations of this sort persist for millennia in a population. Generally, it is assumed they arise randomly, but this is probably too simplistic an answer. Background radiation? While it is certainly true that when 'evolution' stumbles upon a mutation that infers some advantage to a breeding population, it is likely to spread and spread quickly, the fact is that the vast majority of mutations infer no environmental advantage whatsoever. For a Pirsigian, is this Dynamic Quality - or Dynamic Curiousity? MoC anyone? Why not? It's where you are going. In the argument you seem to be developing, you are willing to assign some agency to random mutation beyond selective environmental forces. This is a slippery slope. It leads inevitably to the argument for intelligent design when the preponderance of evidence indicates that this is an entirely unnecessary fiction. To be effective, evolution doesn't have to be smart and it doesn't have to have a plan, goal, or target; it just has to have the capacity for random mutation, a large enough population, and enough replicating generations. As a biologist, you should know this. If you are going to make analogies between biological evolution and Pirsig's evolutionary static levels, then you must be at least as canny as Pirsig, who knew better than to assign intelligent agency to the evolution of SPOVs. Now on the face of it, you can argue with me that Pirsig's SPOVs are all about directed, or intelligent change and that Dynamic Quality, his 'force for the good' is just that agency. I would argue that this is not what he meant and is not even remotely necessary to evolve the 4 static levels he proposes. He is much smarter than that. Best, Mary 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/md/archives.html
