Dan, Adrie, all,
thanks for that one, Adrie. I'll be careful!
My previous post was about things I've already thought through but now
I'll switch to a more tentative (and potentially more creative) mode of
discussion.
Dan:
So I remember reading this speech by Leonard Cohen which you can find here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/leonardcohenhowigotmysong.htm
And he says some thiings which might contradict the notion that a
guitar is simply an inorganic pattern in that it the guitar is
actually a living thing and I think he has a point, one that any
musician can appreciate. Anyway...
Tuukka:
What wouldn't be a living thing? Would you consider the sun to be dead?
Althought I don't know, I suppose you mightn't.
The guitar isn't inorganic when Leonard Cohen inhales the fragrance of
its living wood. But that life is given to the wood by Cohen himself.
The notion of inorganicity may seem paradoxical since we as observers of
inorganic patterns are anyhow biological patterns and can perform the
act of observing an inorganic pattern only by making it a part of our
cognition, thus turning it alive.
When Cohen inhales the fragrance of his guitar's living wood the guitar
serves him as an instrument of self-reflection. He doesn't play the
strings but the guitar plays his mind, reminding him of the day he
bought it.
We may call inorganic patterns inorganic to emphasize the fact that they
can so easily be separated from what makes them alive.
Fingernails are biological patterns but fingernail clippings aren't. The
difference isn't about something one can observe by putting a fingernail
under a microscope. It's about the fact that even though the clippings
don't come with us as we go we assume that they remain in existence
after being discarded. That we remain able to perceive them even if we
wouldn't use them for anything and even if they didn't remind us of
anything.
A pacemaker isn't a biological pattern when it's sitting on the table
but it's a biological pattern when in use.
We have the notion of inorganic pattern for referring to things that
could serve as extensions of many different biological patterns. When we
were at the pier the guitar was an extension of the woman playing it but
had someone else played it afterwards the guitar would've turned into an
extension of that other person. That doesn't mean the woman who played
the guitar would've also turned into that other person's extension. Only
the guitar changes with regards to whose extension it is.
An inorganic pattern has instrumental value when a biological pattern uses
it to actualize a choice it has made. Obviously, this doesn't mean the
guitar should be discarded after the song is over. Forgetting the guitar on
the pier and and thus exposing it to the elements would've been a bad
choice. But as far as we are concerned of quality, the guitar inherently has
none. The reason for bringing it back in and taking care of it lies in the
value of songs we'll play in the future, but preparing for the future this
way is an intellectual pattern. It doesn't mean the guitar would inherently
have quality.
Dan:
No but see the guitar does have value! Even if I were to agree with
you, which I don't, that the guitar is only an inorganic pattern, it
is a pattern of VALUE! See what I think you are doing is mistaking a
thing as having quality instead of it the thing being quality.
Tuukka:
I am not claiming that the guitar is only an inorganic pattern. I am
merely emphasizing the inorganic aspect of the guitar in order to
illustrate a metaphysical point. The guitar, as the extension of a
guitar player, is also biological.
I wrote that "as far as we're concerned of quality, the guitar
inherently has none". These are kind of meaningless words as Buddhist
philosophy doesn't introduce essences, that is, things that would
inherently have value.
By saying that I just tried to express that since the guitar doesn't
make decisions, attributing value to it doesn't change its behavior,
whereas attributing value to a person might change that person's
self-image and thus behavior. I suppose, perhaps mistakenly, that we
don't need to take an animistic viewpoint in this discussion, unless
that is what you want.
I also suppose, perhaps equally mistakenly, that we don't subscribe to
essentialism. You indeed seem to be suggesting the guitar essentially
has value, but the question is, what do you intend to do with that value
apart from using it to disagree with my previous post?
The model I'm presenting here doesn't contradict physics, but it's a
model of value, not a model of atoms and molecules. The guitar consists
of atoms and molecules, which are value, but people don't perceive them,
just the guitar, so the atoms and molecules are intellectual patterns.
Do you feel the need to use these intellectual patterns to disagree with
my previous post?
It isn't clear to me what you mean by suggesting I mistake a thing
having quality to a thing being quality. Everything is quality, so the
notion of "everything is quality" doesn't help in analysis, which
basically means splitting a whole into smaller parts. You can't split a
whole into smaller parts according to an attribute that is shared by
every single part. You know this, and I know the MOQ is more than
analysis. But I don't see any other way to solve the problems Pirsig
mentions in the Turner letter except analysis.
Biological patterns accumulate value according to the choices they make.
This is because biological patterns may have volition, which makes it
possible to attribute the value of a choice to the pattern that made the
choice. This value is inherent to the biological pattern in the sense that
it stays with the biological pattern even after the choice has already been
made.
Dan:
Do you really believe biological patterns have volition? I can't see
it. Biological patterns are constrained into a specific set of
parameters which disable them, the biological patterns, from going
outside those parameters. So really the volition or choice that
biological patterns 'have' isn't that so much as being had by the
quality that both surrounds them, the biological patterns, and
permeates them, simultaneously making it seem as if free will exists,
which of course it does, but only seem to. So in essence this tends to
render your argument null and void if one follows said reasoning above
to its logical conclusion.
Tuukka:
I might understand the concept of volition in a much more mundane sense
as what you're aiming at. I understand volition simply as something
like, if a rock is about to roll off a cliff and hit someone, the rock
will not stop if you tell it that rolling off the cliff would have bad
consequences. But if a person were about to push that rock off the cliff
he might stop if you told him there's someone down below. Of course this
kind of "volition" is an illusion, it's just an illusion that happens to
be helpful.
Frankly, I can't parse the sentence: "So really the volition or choice
that biological patterns 'have' isn't that so much as being had by the
quality that both surrounds them, the biological patterns, and permeates
them, simultaneously making it seem as if free will exists, which of
course it does, but only seem to."
Social patterns can be modeled as the power set of biological patterns.
Suppose we have persons A, B and C, which compose the set {A,B,C}. The power
set of this set is {{A,B,C},{A,B},{B,C},{A,C},{A},{B},{C},{}}. In other
words, the power set of a set includes all subsets of that set (and,
technically, the empty set {}). Each subset of the power set that has more
than one member is a social pattern whose value is the sum of the value of
its members. Social patterns, too, could be said to have volition but this
volition manifests via biological patterns.
Whenever a biological pattern makes a choice, the justification of that
choice accumulates the same value as what is the value of that choice to all
that are affected by it. This justification is an intellectual pattern.
The merit of this model is that it provides a clear answer to a question
Pirsig answered only vaguely and with some difficulty and uncertainty in his
letter to Paul Turner. That letter is, first and foremost, about defining
the intellectual level. Pirsig writes that although the ancient Egyptians
had intellect, their culture was not an intellectual one. This can be
expressed more analytically as follows.
The justification of any choice made by a biological pattern is an
intellectual pattern in the sense that it accumulates value as the
biological pattern makes said choice. That is to say, any such justification
is intellectual with regards to how it accumulates value. But we can say
that a pattern that is intellectual with regards to value accumulation is
anyhow metaphysically biological if it only takes biological values into
account. If it only takes social values, at most, into account, it is
metaphysically a social pattern. These are *improper* intellectual patterns.
A *proper* intellectual pattern takes intellectual values into account. It
can do so by including statements about other intellectual patterns that are
either proper or improper.
The difference between proper and improper intellectual patterns manifests
via the abstract symbol manipulation Pirsig mentions in his letter. Let's
suppose two hungry people, Steve and Jane, and a banana. Steve and Jane are
biological patterns and if they only take their biological values into
consideration it would, simplistically, mean that each one of them thinks:
"I should get the banana" in which "I" is a biological pattern. Therefore
this intellectual pattern would be an improper one.
Friends of Steve would want Steve to get the banana whereas friends of Jane
would want Jane to get it, but this would only take social values into
account. Therefore such judgements made by friends are also improper
intellectual patterns.
A proper intellectual pattern in this situation could be something like:
"The one who is hungrier should get the banana". In this pattern, "the one
who is hungrier" is neither a biological nor a social pattern. It's a
variable, as the hungrier one could as well be Steve or Jane. This is why it
makes the justification properly intellectual. And variables are denoted by
abstract symbols.
When we define the model like this, the social level necessarily accumulates
more value than the biological level, and the intellectual level (including
both proper and improper intellectual patterns) necessarily accumulates more
value than the social level, just like Pirsig would have it. To be sure,
Pirsig would probably say that the higher levels "have" more value, not that
they "accumulate" more value, but this model anyhow explains what kind of a
process leads to such an outcome.
This model does not verify the hypothesis that *any* higher-level pattern is
more valuable than *any* lower-level pattern. It's not clear to me whether
Pirsig thinks this way, but I got the impression that he might. I don't
think this is a tenable assumption. Let's suppose a medical study, according
to which a certain drug is safe with regards to certain risks, but the drug
has some other very harmful side-effect the study did not take into account.
If the drug is deemed safe because of such a study, the assumption of its
safety is an intellectual pattern, but the choice of making the drug
available for consumers is not valuable but has a negative value.
In his letter Pirsig also mentions that the argument that the Metaphysics of
Quality is not an intellectual formulation is not clear to him. Within the
model I have presented, the Metaphysics of Quality can be used as
justification for making a choice and is in this sense an intellectual
pattern among others.
Dan:
Well and yes of course the MOQ is a collection of intellectual
patterns of value. What else could it be? Any argument to the contrary
is a bit ludicrous. Not that I am saying you are doing that here. I
have always thought that intellectual patterns are ideas. I know
somewhere in Lila's Child Robert Pirsig equates them, intellectual
patterns, to mind. Or maybe he is talking about the intellectual
level. Either way, since intellectual patterns as ideas are not
physical entities existing at large in the world for all to see, any
medical study, or any study, for that matter, isn't concerned so much
with the physical properties of the world as they are with the idea of
physical properties.
Tuukka:
I agree.
Regards,
Tuk
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