Dan,
On 24-Jul-16 23:54, Dan Glover wrote:
Tuukka,
On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Tuk <m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
Dan, all,
On 20-Jul-16 9:25, Dan Glover wrote:
Tuukka, all,
On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Tuk <m...@tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
Dan, Adrie, all,
Tuukka:
Pirsig writes that the ancient Egyptians were social whereas the Greek
were intellectual, but the MOQ wasn't invented back then. So I guess
rocks were inorganic and dinosaurs biological, too.
Dan:
Remember the gravity analogy from ZMM? That pertains to this point
too. When we begin to mistake the map for the territory, when we take
concepts as concrete reality, well then it only seems common sense to
think biological and social patterns existed before Robert Pirsig
invented the terms for his MOQ. Just like gravity existing before
Newton's laws of gravity. If we think about it, however, the only
conclusion we can make is that like gravity, biological and social
patterns did not exist before they were invented.
Tuukka:
In any case, once Pirsig's letter to Turner was published the ancient
Egyptians became social and the ancient Greek intellectual. That's the
notion I'm trying to grasp here.
Dan:
Well, I think Mr. Pirsig answered the questions put to him as best as
he could rather than deferring. Check it out:
"Dear Paul Turner
"The question you raise about the intellectual level has troubled me
too. When I answered Dan Glover in Lila's Child, I remember being a
little annoyed that anyone should ask what the intellectual level
is-as though he were asking me what I mean by the word, "the." Any
definition you give is more likely to complicate understanding than
simplify it. But since then I have seen the question grow because the
answer I have given is inadequate.
"First of all, the line that, "Biologically [Lila's] fine, socially
she's pretty far down the scale, intellectually she's nowhere. . ."
did not mean that Lila was lying on the cabin floor unconscious,
although some interpretations of the intellectual level would make it
seem so. Like so many words, "intellectual" has different meanings
that are confused. The first confusion is between the social title,
"Intellectual," and the intellectual level itself. The statement,
"Some intellectuals are not intellectual at all," becomes meaningful
when one recognizes this difference. I think now that the statement
"intellectually she's nowhere," could have been more exactly put: "As
an intellectual Lila is nowhere." That would make it clearer that the
social title was referred to and the dispute about her intellectuality
would not have arisen.
Tuukka:
But what is Lila inorganically? Flesh and bone aren't inorganic according to
you,
Dan:
Oh but they are. Inorganic. They, flesh and bone, are made of molecules.
Tuukka:
Okay, I get it you mean they are both inorganic and biological.
so do you mean that Lila inorganically doesn't exist, or that she
inorganically consists of some compounds that are part of her body but don't
contain DNA? How about cells, then? Only their mitochondria contain DNA. So
are only mitochondria of cells biological whereas the other parts of the
cell are inorganic?
Dan:
If we check out Chapter 12 in Lila, we find:
"In this plain of understanding static patterns of value are divided
into four systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social
patterns and intellectual patterns. They are exhaustive. That's all
there are. If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics-Inorganic,
Biological, Social and Intellectual-nothing is left out. No "thing,"
that is. Only Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any
encyclopedia, is absent.
"But although the four systems are exhaustive they are not exclusive.
They all operate at the same time and in ways that are almost
independent of each other.
"This classification of patterns is not very original, but the
Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them that is unusual.
It says they are not continuous. They are discrete. They have very
little to do with one another. Although each higher level is built on
a lower one it is not an extension of that lower level. Quite the
contrary. The higher level can often be seen to be in opposition to
the lower level, dominating it, controlling it where possible for its
own purposes.
"This observation is impossible in a substance-dominated metaphysics
where everything has to be an extension of matter. But now atoms and
molecules are just one of four levels of static patterns of quality
and there is no intellectual requirement that any level dominate the
other three." [Robert Pirsig]
Dan comments:
So Lila can be and is all four levels at the same time.
Tuukka:
Yeah. I thought about this in a too complicated manner at first.
Anyway, the above Pirsig quote inspires me to modify the model.
Unfortunately my attempt to do so produced a jungle of hypotheses that has
been too complicated to understand so far. I spent the last day in that
jungle and this day, too, and haven't come up with a complete solution. I
won't be home for the weekend so I won't have time to think this through
soon, if that's even possible. Maybe I should break down as a list what I
have so far.
Tentative value and pattern definition: Firstly, let us define "value" as
something that's either inorganic, biological, social or intellectual, and
"pattern" as a data object that may have an inorganic, biological, social
and intellectual attribute. Values are not patterns and patterns are not
values. In the context of programming we also want to say that variables
have values or that functions return values, but these are "improper
values". "Proper values" are either inorganic, biological, social or
intellectual.
Dan:
You are making this harder than it has to be.
Tuukka:
Possibly, if talking is what you want to do. But not so if it's
programming. There would've been alternatives I seriously considered.
One interesting alternative was one in which each value was also a
pattern. But it didn't seem to make sense.
Tentative biological pattern definition: The biological value of a
biological pattern is the sum of the decisions it has been affected by,
including its own decisions. Lila is biologically fine because she's a
sexually confident woman.
Dan:
No, she's not. Lila is growing older and she understands how she will
soon lose whatever it was that once attracted men to her.
Tuukka:
Ah, but of course. However, Pirsig literally writes that "biologically,
she's fine".
The social value of a biological pattern is the
sum of how its decisions have affected everyone, including itself. Lila is
pretty far down the scale because she breaks marriages. Its intellectual
value is determined as the value of justifications it can express. Lila is
nonexistent as she can't express intellectual things.
Dan:
Now you sound like Rigel.
Tuukka:
Dang, I can't believe I fell into that Victorian thinking pattern. I
just tried to find some reason why Pirsig wrote that socially, Lila's
pretty far down the scale. But I guess that has more to do with not
having a steady job, being some sort of a vagabond and so on. I don't
remember getting a clear impression of who is Lila socially.
Again, from Lila:
"She didn't want to get involved with him, though. She didn't want to
get involved with anybody. After a while they want to get involved,
like Jim, and that's when the trouble begins."
Dan comments:
See, Lila didn't wreck Jim's marriage. Jim wrecked Jim's marriage. And
it isn't simply Lila's biological beauty that draws men like the
Captain, Rigel, and Jim to Lila. Beauty has as much to do with
cultural values as it does with biological values. Justifications,
like beauty, are also culturally anchored, as described here:
"Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was a historically shattering
declaration of independence of the intellectual level of evolution
from the social level of evolution, but would he have said it if he
had been a seventeenth century Chinese philosopher? If he had been,
would anyone in seventeenth century China have listened to him and
called him a brilliant thinker and recorded his name in history? If
Descartes had said, "The seventeenth century French culture exists,
therefore I think, therefore I am," he would have been correct."
[Lila]
Dan comments:
And then so sure in a subject and object dominated world, black and
white, right and wrong, it is easier to assign value, positive or
negative, to 'things' but when we move to the MOQ, where things are
now patterns of value, we face a greater challenge in that a 'thing'
can be evaluated in both positive and negative aspects and at the same
time.
Tuukka:
I agree value assignment is cognitively more expensive in the MOQ than
in SOM.
Tentative social pattern definition: Social patterns are the power set of
the social values of biological patterns. The social value of each social
pattern is determined according to how the decisions made by the members
have affected the members of the pattern. This way, even though getting
wounded decreases a soldier's biological value it doesn't decrease his
social value as it wasn't his decision.
Dan:
As long as it is understood how social patterns are not a collection
of biological patterns.
Tentative intellectual pattern definition: When a decision is made, its
justification accumulates as much value as is the social value of the
decision for everyone affected by it.
Questions:
1. What is the inorganic value of a biological pattern?
2. What is the inorganic value of a social pattern?
3. What is the inorganic value of an intellectual pattern?
4. What is the biological value of a social pattern?
5. What is the biological value of an intellectual pattern?
6. What is the social value of an intellectual pattern?
On a hypothetical inorganic pattern definition: Perhaps it's possible to
combine the notion that serving as the extension of a biological pattern
accumulates inorganic value with the notion that identification accumulates
inorganic value. After all, a guitar cannot be the extension of a guitar
player unless identified as such. This means that the notion of
identification being the cause of inorganic value accumulation makes
redundant the notion that serving as the extension of a biological pattern
is the cause of inorganic value attribution. But if we define inorganic
patterns as identifications, how does value accumulation work so that the
inorganic level doesn't end up having more value than the biological one?
Dan:
Unsure where you are going with this.
Tuukka:
When I wrote that I was stuck because I understood patterns in a too
complicated manner. That's just my way of approaching things. I slam
right at them with an obsessed mind, write a lot of text that doesn't
seem to be going anywhere, feel the urge to publish it to get it out of
my mind, and finally at some later moment figure out what I really want
to think.
"Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," that
can mean thought about anything and the word, "intellectual," where
abstract thought itself is of primary importance. Thus, though it may
be assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect,
it can be doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture."
Tuukka:
Here "intellect" means improperly or proprely intellectual whereas
"intellectual" refers to properly intellectual.
Dan comments:
See, notice how he qualifies his answer by first stating how difficult
it is to answer. The question. How by doing so may in fact only sow
more and greater confusion, especially since this language, English,
is prone to alternate meanings even given the same word and sometimes
even the same context. But on the other hand, he decides to do it,
damn the torpedoes and all that.
Tuukka:
In effect, I get the feeling you're suggesting I should regard my results as
preliminary instead of speaking of "resolving issues".
Dan:
If your results are falsifiable, then they may lead to greater awareness.
Tuukka:
They may be verifiable by creating an artificial intelligence according
to them.
More from Robert Pirsig's letter:
"When getting into a definition of the intellectual level much clarity
can be gained by recognizing a parallel with the lower levels. Just as
every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic
patterns are biological; and just as every social level
Tuukka:
Why does he use the word "level" here instead of "pattern" like in the rest
of the text? Just a meaningless rhetorical convention?
Dan:
I would say so, yes.
Tuukka:
Cool.
is also
biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every
intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are
intellectual. Handshaking, ballroom dancing, raising one's right hand
to take an oath, tipping one's hat to the ladies, saying "Gesundheit
!" after a sneeze-there are trillions of social customs that have no
intellectual component. Intellectuality occurs when these customs as
well as biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
that stands for them and these signs are manipulated independently of
the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can then be defined very
loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. Grammar,
logic and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign
manipulation."
Dan comments:
I think this paragraph answers your questions about guitars and
clothes and how they can be strictly inorganic patterns or inorganic
and biological patterns simultaneously depending upon the origins of
materials used to construct said patterns. Also it shows how social
and intellectual patterns, although discrete systems in their own
right, cannot exist without the underlying inorganic and biological
patterns that uphold them. In essence, when we walk out of a room, it
cannot be said to exist or to not exist. The room. The story ends. And
yeah, then we can perhaps walk back into the room and reassure
ourselves that it does indeed exist. The room. Or not. If something
has occurred in our absence to destroy the room.
Tuukka:
The room will keep existing in our memory, just like hairs are categorized
as biological in our minds even though we haven't tested the hairs we
encounter for DNA.
Dan:
Whether the room exists in memory or not has nothing to do with saying
the room exists or not. Map and territory.
Tuukka:
Remind me why we're talking about this?
Maybe, if an inorganic pattern accumulates value as the extension of a
biological pattern, it simply retains the value.
Come to think of it, even in my current model the inorganic level can
have
more value than the biological if the biological level has negative
value
and a biological pattern uses an inorganic pattern to do something
good.
Perhaps I have to measure value here so that it never has negative
value.
Yeah, that would seem to work.
Dan:
If there is no negative value, then what impetus drives progress and
evolution?
Tuukka:
What I meant is that we have to measure value without negative values in
this context because of the following problem:
Suppose a biological pattern Jane of a value of -5 playing a guitar of 0
value so that 3 units of value are accumulated. In this case the
biological
level would have a value of -2 whereas the inorganic level would have a
value of 3. This makes the pattern language contradict Pirsig because
Pirsig
says the biological level has more value than the inorganic level.
We can resolve the contradiction in the following way:
Negative value and positive value accumulate as biological patterns make
choices. However, we have to store the negative and positive value to
different variables. If we sum these variables, we get the relative value
of
the pattern. The aforementioned problem features relative values.
However,
if we sum the absolute values of these variables, we get the absolute
value
of the pattern, which would be 3 for the guitar and 7 for Jane. When
Pirsig
writes that the biological level has more quality than the inorganic
level
he means that it has more absolute value.
Relative value drives progress and evolution.
Dan:
The way I understand it, there are no absolute values in the MOQ. You
seem to be arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making
assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see!
Here is a contradiction.
Tuukka:
That's exactly what I'm doing because I'm developing a pattern language and
I don't want the pattern language to contradict Pirsig. My goal is a system
in which I can't do "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making
assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see! Here
is a contradiction." And it seems to me I just reached that goal regarding
negative values by introducing the notion of absolute value.
If you don't like the notion of absolute value, the goal apparently can also
be reached with a MOQ that has no negative value. Looks like you want a MOQ
with negative value but without absolute value. And I'm curious how you're
going to get that, because I don't know how to do that without leaving room
for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making assumptions on
those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see! Here is a
contradiction."
I think there's a name for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then
making assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying,
see! Here is a contradiction". The name is "reductio ad absurdum".
Dan:
And so remind me again why we are talking?
Tuukka:
We're talking about this because you argued that there are no absolute
values in the MOQ. The most likely explanation for your stance is you're
using the Two Truths Doctrine
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine) to formulate the
distinction between the relative and the absolute. But I don't mean
absolute value in that sense. I mean absolute value in the mathematical
sense. That is, the absolute value of x is |x|. These are all "relative
truths" in the Buddhist sense.
Do you see what I'm aiming at? In everyday life it doesn't matter
whether
an
article of clothing is made from synthetic fibres or human hair. It's
still
an article of clothing. It's an object. It doesn't walk around on its
own
and it doesn't breathe, and so on. I just think this kind of a
division
between the inorganic and the biological is more in accord with
everyday
common sense use of language than focusing on the point that clothes
made
of
human hair contain DNA. Who cares about that? And why?
Dan:
First of all, it is okay to use subject/object terminology as long as
it is remembered that those terms stand for patterns of value. Second,
we are discussing the MOQ and its terminology, which may or may not
differ from everyday terminology. Is blood a biological pattern? It
doesn't walk around and breathe. How about organs awaiting transplant?
A heart, or a set of lungs? Kidneys? Are those biological patterns?
Tuukka:
Well, they're *parts* of a biological pattern.
Dan:
So is a baby part of a biological pattern too?
Tuukka:
Whichever it is, the pattern that decides that is an intellectual
pattern.
Dan:
Ah. So we throw up our hands?
Tuukka:
I meant that I don't particularly want to discuss this because I'm not very
sure of how this thing goes, but there are other things of which I'm more
sure and they seem all the more important for me when you question their
importance by questioning whether it is even possible to resolve issues.
But I can answer the question anyway. I think the baby is part of a
biological pattern before birth and a biological pattern in its own right
after birth.
Dan:
So before birth the baby is part of mother and after baby is a
separate and independent being. Is that what you're saying?
Tuukka:
Yes. The baby is physically separate from the mother after birth.
Tuukka:
Yeah, well I'm a pensioner so I have all day for this.
Dan:
Ah. So the negative quality that tends to drive me, namely, the need
to earn a living, is absent with your life, though, of course, perhaps
it's debatable whether or not it is really negative quality, the need
to work every day. Some people, like me, enjoy it. The working. Even
though I'd rather not be doing it. The working. If I had my druthers,
that is. Which I don't. And maybe that's where the conundrum exists.
Interesting. I often wonder if I would be nearly as productive if I
wasn't driven the way I am. Instead my habit of working and writing
every single day, I might instead be tempted to take a day off now and
again. And that now and again might indeed grow into the habit of not
writing and not working every day. I'm just not sure.
Tuukka:
Work's a duty I thought to fulfill. Since Pirsig made academic
philosophy seem like a waste of time I thought to become a machinist. Or
a welder. I really liked welding although I didn't want to do that for a
living. And the teacher said I was the best technical drawer he's ever
had. I completed the assignments faster than my classmates and had
nothing to do for most of the time. But a guy on our class thought I
don't fit in and I had nothing to prove so one day I walked away for good.
I'd be able to work a little. But I can't make much money or I'll lose
my pension. Work isn't a kind of a "let's see what you can do" thing for
a Finnish pensioner. It's a "let's see what the welfare state allows you
to do" kind of thing. Since working feels like concession to begin with,
having to beg to make that concession turns the whole affair so
repulsive I don't want to have anything to do with it.
Not having to go to work gave me time to work on the MOQ but it also
isolated me. My home is my work place. I have a hard time relaxing here.
I'm anxious right now. I'm alone under the authority of a demanding
superego that used to require me to work all the time and is having a
hard time not burning myself out. But even my work doesn't progress if I
can't relax or have fun. I'm not organized enough to meditate regularly.
I need something intense to direct my attention away from work stuff and
then, when I relax, the answers to my questions pop out of nowhere. But
all that intense stuff costs money.
I've spent more than I earn for years and one day I mightn't be able to
do that anymore. Mentally, I cringe when I think of that day. My first
reaction to the idea is that that's a day when I'll kill myself. But
suicide doesn't really feel like my cup of tea. Suicide sucks because
the one who dies that way tends to disgrace the things he stood for.
Petri Walli was an ingenious Finnish rock musician who killed himself,
and someone wrote that with him died the modern hippie dream.
The near-impossibility of suicide makes me afraid of ending up living
without wanting to live. I'm so bad at living that if I'm hungry I might
just ignore it instead of eating. Pirsig wrote he lives out of habit but
my habits suck. I'm too high-strung to be able to go for a walk in the
park. I smoke because that's so addictive it's easy to do. And when I
don't have cigarettes I go to my ashtray and roll my own from what's
left in the butts there. At least those butts don't cost money.
I have lots of respect for Robert Pirsig. He managed to have a job in
addition to writing. I don't feel like I'm very good at writing. I used
to be better but I kind of lost focus. I can still get good ideas but I
express them when they're not finished because I've been at this for
over a decade and this never seems to get finished anyway, although I
wished that it would. But if this got finished now I don't know what
else I'd do, so it doesn't matter.
I feel hard but brittle, like glass. And I want to feel young and
supple. I've been trying to figure out what's wrong. Maybe I should live
more communally so that the presence of other people would help in
grounding me. It sure looks like I'm turning into some kind of a hippie
anyway. There's life in that direction, life that isn't expensive.
Unconditional love intrigues me because that's the antithesis of how I
lived when my productivity was the measure of my worth. It's not peace
and love I'm usually thinking about but I'd like to.
I wish I had a girlfriend.
So why do I care? I care on account of the possibility that those
words I saw on the ceiling in that hospital room really did mean
something. That those words are inside me, somewhere, waiting to be
born. And maybe these words right here are part of them. Those words I
saw but couldn't quite read. Or maybe this is all just a bunch of
silly shite and none of it means a thing. Either way, caring seems
better than not caring.
Dan:
But isn't that so for the universe in general? When the story stops,
so does the universe.
Tuukka:
Yeah. Quality is modeled by the mind, and the mind is biological.
Dan:
Ideas come first. Then comes the biological mind.
Tuukka:
What do you mean? Intellectual patterns come first? In a temporal sense
or
in a priority order? Do you mean that the biological mind is an idea?
Dan:
What else can it be but an idea?
Tuukka:
It can be the source of an idea. Pirsig writes biological patterns are the
source of intellectual patterns.
Dan:
Could you offer a quote where he, Robert Pirsig, says this?
Sure. Chapter 13 of LILA.
"When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of individual
criminals, the issue becomes more complex. In the case of treason or
insurrection or war a criminal's threat to a society can be very real. But
if an established social structure is not seriously threatened by a
criminal, then an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral
justification for killing him.
What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a biological
organism. He is not even just a defective unit of society. Whenever you
kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A human being
is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a
society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of
evolution than social patterns of value. Just as it is more moral for a
doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is more moral for an idea to
kill a society than it is for a society to kill an idea."
I noticed these bits in Lila that might or might not pertain:
"You made a statement in your book that everyone knows and agrees to
what 'Quality' is. Obviously everyone does not! You refused to define
'Quality,' thus preventing any argument on the subject. You tell us
that 'dialecticians' who debate these matters are scoundrels. I guess
that would include lawyers too. That's pretty good. You carefully tie
your critics' hands and feet so that they cannot give you any
opposition, tar their reputations for good measure, and then you say,
'Okay, come on out and fight.' Very brave. Very brave."
"May I come out and fight?" the author said. "My exact statement was
that people do disagree as to what Quality is, but their disagreement
is only on the objects in which they think Quality inheres."
"What's the difference?"
"Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source
of things. The objects about which people disagree are merely
transitory. " [Lila, discussion between Rigel and Phaedrus]
",,, with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical experience is not an
experience of "objects." It's an experience of value patterns produced
by a number of sources, not just inorganic patterns." [Lila, Robert
Pirsig]
Tuukka:
The later quote reminds me of the age-old story of a Westerner going to
Japan and hearing that a certain temple is thousand or so years old. But
the temple is made of wood, so the Japanese have to rebuild it once in
one or two centuries, and the Westerner concludes that the temple is not
the same as it was a thousand years ago because the planks (inorganic
patterns) have been changed.
Anyway, the discussion we're having here - at least this part of it -
seems to be about whether biological patterns are intellectual or
intellectual patterns biological. I don't know how we could speak of
"emergence" if intellectual patterns weren't biological in the sense of
emerging from biological patterns. But you seem to keep going about the
admittedly factual fact that the notion of biological pattern is an
intellectual one. I agree about that but I dare say that individual
biological patterns are not necessarily intellectual. That is to say,
they can be perceived without proper intellect.
Regards,
Tuk
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