BTW - I should say, but I don't comment on the inclusion of both
idealism and materialism within MOQ because it's blindingly obvious it
does include all isms, past present and future - it would be a useless
metaphysics if it didn't.
Isms are boring to talk about, unless you're a "professional"
philosopher I guess ?.
Ian
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Ian Glendinning
<ian.glendinn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tuukka,
>
> Thanks for the reminder of Matt's comment - I'd forgotten - I admitted
> at the time I hadn't yet understood it (I never have enough time to
> follow-up all the avenues here). Two points
>
> (1) I'm pretty sure Matt was not suggesting those 5 levels - the
> quality outside (and pervading) the 4 levels is unpatterned - DQ in
> other words. The Inorganic level of SPV's is not "fundamental" - just
> the first division of static patterns emerging from the unpatterned
> background - Northrop's undifferentiated aesthetic continuum.
>
> (2) Bo's view was not "popular" - just a vocal and entirely
> "defensive" few (but then he was under attack). The defense never had
> anything to do with the arguments, and Bo sadly never listened to any
> arguments - just hurled around abuse like "acolytes" at anyone trying
> to engage in debate. He had (still has) a point, but he would never
> allow anyone who cared to elaborate how "we" solve it. (that's an
> inclusive we - him included).
>
> I'm still very concerned (primarily concerned) with the evolution of
> our future "intellects" beyond SOMism. The rest of the MoQ is history
> - literally. (By the way - note the scare quotes - if people want to
> reserve the word intellect for something narrower, then I'm OK with
> that - I just mean "good use of our human faculties" - which is where
> we all came in - what is good ?
>
> People mustn't confuse the quality of debate with the volume of the
> participation.
> As before, bye and take care, but stay in touch.
> Ian
>
> On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Tuukka Virtaperko
> <m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
>> Ian,
>> by speaking of a generalized "you" I spoke to the spirit of this forum that
>> makes people express their support to me privately rather than publicly, on
>> this forum. By doing so they could be doing me a favor. I don't want to get
>> thrown out like Bo because my ideas were too popular. But there could be
>> some problem with the spirit of this forum if advocacy of new ideas is best
>> kept secret.
>>
>> About attribution, then. On 1.1.2012 at 16:22 (UTC +2) I have written a
>> message, where I attribute the circular model to Matt, but I couldn't find
>> the message in which Matt presents the suggestion. You seem to present a
>> somewhat similar idea on 23.12.2011 at 10:57 (UTC +2):
>>
>> "Interesting Tuukka,
>>
>> Since "information" is the root of physics - the availability of
>> something that can be patterned (or unpatterned) - I have no problem
>> with that. One reason I've always rejected the idea that physics has a
>> materialist base (except by convention).
>>
>> Similarly inorganic / organic split is confounded by our conventional
>> material world view. To me inorganic just means not living - patterns
>> that are unable to replicate and perpetuate themselves against the
>> slide back to entropy. Memetic, genetic - makes no difference what the
>> "material" is - so long as it's patternable information - hence no
>> need for any mind-material type of duality.
>>
>> Your picture is pretty much where I've been, so I'll need to
>> understand Matt's comment.
>>
>> Ian"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Matt also said, on 23.12.2011 at 20:58 (UTC +2), that:
>>
>> "
>>
>> If I followed your critical argument correctly, then you were
>> suggesting that Pirsig needed to "develop a parallel system of
>> patterns that would be idealistic" to offset his isolated attention to the
>> classic picture of the universe furnished by an ascending line from
>> physics to evolutionary biology to X (a placeholder for whatever it is
>> that furnishes a picture of the social and intellectual).
>>
>> I think that is, more or less, right. Pirsig was lopsided in this respect,
>> because what he needs alongside a picture of the universe that
>> develops from the Big Bang to life on Earth in the Year of Our Lord
>> Savior Jesus Christ 2011 (a "variant of emergent physicalism") is a
>> picture of the development of those vocabularies that allow us to
>> state that picture (a "parallel system of patterns that would be
>> idealistic"). This would be the balancing of, as Dan might put it,
>> materialism and idealism. (And so people don't become confused,
>> these are special uses of "materialism" and especially "idealism,"
>> but I think we need a special sense of "idealism" to try and come to
>> grips with Pirsig's notion of the idea, or intellectual pattern, coming
>> before matter.)
>>
>> However, that being said, my point in suggesting that your criticism of
>> Pirsig is defused by Pirsig because, in the MoQ, it is a mistake to say
>> that an "assumption that existence is fundamentally inorganic" is at
>> work, is that I think you are wrong to think that "saying that
>> something is Quality doesn't mean much" in the MoQ. True, it
>> doesn't explain anything about the patterns themselves when we
>> reach that level, but it precisely causes the assumption you stated to
>> be invalid_because it is_ "an informative metaphysical statement" by
>> telling us "what context we are thinking in." That context, as I put it,
>> is the context in which everything is already understood to be
>> normative, and so follow the rules of the normative.
>>
>> The_implications_ of that metaphysical stance, I think, are left
>> underdeveloped (or at least, there is a lot of room for further growth
>> in understanding how deep that stance penetrates and what
>> implications it should and should not cause to our thinking). One
>> implication is a balance between two systems, as you put it. But
>> Pirsig 1) does provide the conceptual resources for understanding
>> this to be the case and 2) does show cognizance of the need for the
>> two systems by virtue of the other philosophical work he performs in
>> ZMM and Lila. ZMM, after all, is the genealogical unearthing of the
>> line of thought on the_idealist_ side of the equation that produces
>> SOM's_reductive_ emergent physicalism. This is paralleled in Lila
>> by his discourse, for example, on anthropology. The true
>> lopsidedness of Pirsig's extant philosophical work, perhaps, is that on
>> the idealist side, the side that deals with the history of humanity's
>> attempts to develop ideas, it is mostly_deconstructive_, whereas on
>> the materialist side, the side that deals with the nature of reality, it is
>> both deconstructive and constructive (the deconstructive bits are his
>> arguments against taking certain philosophical positions and the
>> constructive bits are his metaphysical system-building).
>>
>> The special senses of "idealism" and "materialism" should be more
>> fully apparent now. For if one uses a typical definition, it does
>> appear that I've just suggested that the system of the Metaphysics of
>> Quality, the "side that deals with the nature of reality," is materialist.
>> But that's not the conceptual position of "materialism": so defined
>> here,_every_ philosophical system should, for comprehensiveness,
>> have an idealist side and a materialist side, and the materialist side
>> defines the_material_ of reality. Descartes has two, res cogitans
>> and res extensa (mind and matter). Pirsig has one: Quality. The
>> material of reality in the MoQ is Quality, which means that it is
>> normative, which means that it blocks attempts to reduce the
>> normative to the non-normative ("reductive emergent physicalism")
>> by finding underneath_everything_ the normative. _What this
>> means_ needs to be further explained, yes; but the conceptual
>> apparatus is already in place to block the inference that the MoQ
>> assumes that "existence is fundamentally inorganic."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> If I understand correctly, this argument says the inorganic level is not the
>> "fundamental category" of the MOQ, because, for example, static quality is
>> definitely more fundamental. I was not being clear about what I meant with
>> fundamental. Yet I do not find the MOQ to truly include a form of idealism
>> because of the argument Matt presents here. The MOQ includes two somewhat
>> separate theories: one of them is a general theory of emergence, with the
>> static value patterns. Another one is more like a traditional metaphysical
>> categorization, in which there are static, Dynamic, classic and romantic
>> forms of quality. In the latter theory, Pirsig presents arguments that the
>> static emerges from the Dynamic, but the Dynamic also somehow has to latch
>> to static quality, which means that opportunities for the manifestation of
>> Dynamic Quality emerge from certain configurations of static quality.
>> Likewise, classic and romantic quality emerge from each other. This gives
>> rise to an important difference between the general theory of emergence
>> portion of the MOQ and the traditional metaphysical portion of the MOQ. The
>> latter cannot be used as a general theory of emergence, because it does not
>> define metaphysical categories in which we could not only say what emergence
>> is, but also what it is not.
>>
>> Therefore, the notion of emergence is largely irrelevant in the traditional
>> metaphysical portion of the MOQ. That portion of the MOQ features no
>> category pair which could not be argued to emerge from the other. Only the
>> theory of levels of static value does so. For example, we may not argue that
>> the biological level emerges straight from the social, that is, that the
>> emergence would go backwards.
>>
>> This is why I don't find it satisfactory to say that the MOQ includes
>> idealism in the traditional metaphysical portion, and materialism in the
>> general theory of emergence portion. In order to include idealism in such a
>> way that mental constructs can be compared to materialistic constructs, the
>> constructs have to be defined within the same theory. This means they should
>> also be expressed as levels of static value. The traditional metaphysical
>> portion of the MOQ resembles, to some extent, a metatheory of the general
>> theory of emerge portion of the MOQ, and those metatheoretic entities cannot
>> be contrasted with the object level entities of the general theory of
>> emergence.
>>
>> Furthermore, when I included both materialism and idealism to the object
>> level theory (the general theory of emergence), that inclusion cannot be
>> contrasted with having materialism in the general theory of emergence, and
>> idealism in the metaphysical theory. I presented the inclusion *within* the
>> object-level theory, and the inclusion could not possibly retain a similar
>> meaning if somehow "transported" or "expanded" to the metatheory level. I
>> don't think the metatheory is idealistic or materialistic. In Pirsig's
>> lingo, the metatheory is about Quality, and I have no problem with that. The
>> object level theory is about static quality. The difference is quite clear.
>>
>> When I said that the MOQ should include both materialism and idealism, I
>> meant it should include them as static quality. What Matt seems to be saying
>> there is that it includes them as Quality. That probably makes some sense,
>> but I want to express both material and mental objects within a general
>> theory of emergence, and Matt's way of seeing things here does not
>> facilitate that. Surely he is not saying that there are five levels, like
>> this: static, inorganic, biological, social, intellectual.
>>
>>
>> Tuukka
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