[Craig to Dan] See Pirsig on iron filings valuing movement towards a magnet. A human responds to DQ by jumping off the hot stove.
[Arlo] This is an issue I've commented on many times. I do not think restricting DQ/experience to living organisms, and certainly not to humans, is an argument that can withstand much scrutiny. In the past I've argued that Pirsig's levels could be understood as 'the set of possibilities by which a designated pattern has to respond to DQ'. In evolutionary terminology, each emergent level increases the possibilities afforded to the pattern. An amoeba has a far greater set of response possibilities than an iron filing, but much less than a dog, which has much less than patterns on the social and, finally, intellectual levels. But from iron filing upwards, all things 'experience' in the MOQ sense. In LILA, Pirsig seems to describe the evolutionary increase in agency (response-possibility) as a 'weak/strong' spectrum. For example, "Biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic forces at a superatomic level." You can read "weak" here specifically as meaning "limited" or "little range of possibility". Each subsequent evolutionary step brings "stronger" Dynamic forces, meaning each evolutionary gain is defined precisely as an increase, or strengthening, in the pattern to respond to DQ. This is also brought out when he says "The strongest moral argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's Dynamic capability-its capability for change and evolution." This simply says "Capital punishment lessens the range of possibility a social pattern has to respond to Dynamic Quality". I do think it makes sense to say, "only a living being can respond *biologically* to Dynamic Quality", and, for example, only once that biological pattern is enculturated into a social milieu does it gain the ability to respond to experience *socially*. This is simply restating the statement "this is a biological pattern" to "this pattern responds to experience biologically". I will point out that in the first 'biological' is an adjective, while in the second it is an adverb, and I think that's a good shift in emphasis. Lastly, I think its clear that (not just from the above quote) Pirsig considered evolution to be the 'result' of Dynamic Quality. The evolution of the universe from Quark–gluon plasma to solar systems with planets is one of inorganic patterns responding to DQ. So either we must say that inorganic patterns 'lost' their ability to respond to DQ, meaning they lost their ability to evolve, or we have to say that DQ was not evidenced in the cosmos until 'sentient beings' arrived. Either of these is unsatisfactory, and really untenable. 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
