Hi Gents, (any Ladies?)
In our work to refine the metaphysics of Quality I think we must use the
element of time here. Actually, we are talking about step two, as step one
should be the first step from where there where no Organic patterns at all,
before the first change, into the moment after the very first change. A change
implies the presence of time, just as an evolution implies some kind of order
which is a kind of time management.
RMP:
"I think it's better to say that time is a static intellectual concept that is
one of the very first to emerge from Dynamic Quality. That keeps Dynamic
Quality concept-free..."
"The MOQ starts with the source of undifferentiated perception itself as the
ultimate reality. The very first differentiation is probably `change`. The
second one may be `before and after`. From this sense of `before and after`
emerge more complex concepts of time."
"... according to the Metaphysics of Quality, time and change did NOT act to
evolve the static universe. Only Dynamic Quality did this. "Time" and "change"
are primary concepts used to describe this evolution but they do not cause
evolution any more than Newton's law of gravity causes the earth to stick
together."
(letter from ROBERT M. PIRSIG to Anthony McWatt, February 23rd, 1998)
DNA, RNA or what effect from DQ we see here, RMP talks about the organic level
as a level that is different from the inorganic level. One difference is that
the superior level is using the lower level for its own purposes. A tree for
example is using the magnetism between water molecules to pump it up into the
top of the tree.
I however think that the main difference between the levels is strongly
dependant to time. Organic patterns are very stable by time. Atoms and
molecules doesn't change very much by time. Hydrogen atoms are the same since
Big Bang etc. Also, chemical reactions have an time order. Chemical reactions
doesn't work backwards, thanks to The Laws of Thermodynamics...
I think that the main difference between the inorganic and the organic level is
related to time this way:
As the inorganic patterns became more and more complex, their duration in time
went the other way, the more complex structure the less duration. The solution
that brought into the organic level is the self reproduction served to us by
Dynamic Quality. Self reproduction overcomes the problem of depletion by age as
new fresh younglings are made. Self reproduction in more than one copy of every
original also brings in an economic advantage as viruses can spread in masses
and find places where chances to survive is better. We should see the
possibilities for a free choice to stay in the acid or move not only as an
individual choice but as a species with large number of copies where the free
choice is made by those who happen to be away from the acid.
Mutations is also a new possibility as the reproductionary systems fails and
some new versions show up to be more fit to the environment than others and
Voila, inorganic evolution is here. Time and order is still a very high quality
idea as depletion, reproduction and evolution by mutations is very hard to
understand and explain without a correct, working, concept of time.
Thanks to DQ, we have more brands of self reproducing vegetables than
Motorcycles.
Jan-Anders
7 feb 2014 x kl. 13.36 skrev Horse:
> Hi Dave
>
> I agree with much of what you say but it's still very important to remember
> that DNA-based life is no more than one possible way for life to exist and
> that it involves an environment and a context. Not having experienced
> something (or maybe mis-interpreting something that we do experience) should
> not blind us to the probability that it exists. Isn't this part of the
> 'Cleveland Harbor Effect'?
>
> "Then he remembered the little “discrepancies” he had seen on the chart when
> he came in. When a buoy had a “wrong” number on it he presumed it had been
> changed since the chart was made. When a certain wall appeared that was not
> shown, he assumed it had been built recently or maybe he hadn’t come to it
> yet and he wasn’t quite where he thought he was. It never occurred to him to
> think he was in a whole different harbor!
> It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart
> disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the
> chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static
> filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not
> fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.
> If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it
> is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole
> cultural intellectual patterns based on past “facts” which are extremely
> selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don’t
> throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to
> keep hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, before
> maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to start
> hammering on others for a long time before they see it too." Pisig, Lila,
> Ch.26
>
> This isn't to say that we should believe any old nonsense, but that we remain
> open to DQ and by sticking rigidly to a definition as the only possibility
> (because that is all we appear to have experienced) then there is very real
> likelihood that new experience is inadvertently rejected.
> The MoQ simply states that biological patterns evolve from inorganic patterns
> - not that DNA-based life evolves from RNA or other specific complex
> molecules. Remaining open to other possibilities is one way of following DQ.
>
> Cheers
>
> Horse
>
>
> On 02/02/2014 16:03, david wrote:
>> Horse said to dmb:
>>
>> At the risk of misinterpreting what Ian's saying, I think what he means is
>> that, as a generalisation, 'life' is the next step up from 'matter'! What we
>> know as life is based around the double helix and involves DNA, genes,
>> proteins etc. but this is only one possible way that life may have emerged.
>> It's a big universe and we only have a sample of one at the present time so
>> to say that life = DNA is a big step in the wrong direction cos we just
>> don't know about other ways in which life may come about. ...A metaphysics
>> needs to be a generalisation that can be applied to all situations and
>> contexts regardless of specifics - the specifics should conform to the
>> general theory of what constitutes what is and isn't 'real'.
>>
>>
>> dmb says:
>> Right, we just don't know about other ways in which life may come about.
>> That's what I was getting at when I said, "DNA-based life isn't just the
>> most obvious kind, I think, but rather the only kind we know of." As I
>> understand it, the MOQ's radical empiricism says that philosophers have no
>> business talking about things outside of experience, no business talking
>> about what James called "trans-experiential" entities and "metaphysical
>> fictions". And this is not an arbitrary rule but rather an assertion about
>> what we can rightly consider to be "real". (If it is known in experience,
>> then it must be included in the philosophers account and, by the same token,
>> if it is not known in experience philosophers should keep it out of their
>> accounts.) I think life that is NOT based on DNA would qualify as something
>> that is outside of experience. One can imagine or speculate but nothing more.
>>
>>
>> When we adopt the radical insight that Man is a participant in the creation
>> of all things, every last bit of it, then the universe is not a separate
>> reality to be discovered but rather a heap of analogies based on experience.
>> Analytic philosophers like to talk about what true and false in all possible
>> worlds but I think the radical empiricism just kind of shakes his head at
>> that kind of hypothetical abstraction.
>>
>> "Abstraction, functioning in this way, becomes a means of arrest far more
>> than a means of advance in thought. It mutilates things; it creates
>> difficulties and finds impossibilities; and more than half the trouble that
>> metaphysicians and logicians give themselves over the paradoxes and
>> dialectic puzzles of the universe may, I am convinced, be traced to this
>> relatively simple source. THE VICIOUSLY PRIVATIVE EMPLOYMENT OF ABSTRACT
>> CHARACTERS AND CLASS NAMES is, I am persuaded, one of the great original
>> sins of the rationalistic mind." -- William James (Emphasis is James's)
>>
>> As Charlene Seigfried puts it, paraphrasing William James, "abstractionism
>> had become vicious already with Socrates and Plato, who deified
>> conceptualization and denigrated the ever-changing flow of experience, thus
>> forgetting and falsifying the origin of concepts as humanly constructed
>> extracts from the temporal flux." (William James's Radical Reconstruction of
>> Philosophy, 379.)
>>
>>
>>
>> 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
>>
>
> --
>
> "Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
> deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
> — Frank Zappa
>
>
> ---
> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus
> protection is active.
> http://www.avast.com
>
> 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
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
