MD Random Patterns

[pclark]

Roger and Jonathan,  I have been following your intresting discussion of patterns. Here is my slant on the matter.   Patterns begin with the beginning of the big bang. At first there are only a couple (?) of possible patterns but these possibilities proliferate as the preceeding possibilities are realized which generates more possibilities. Thus the complexity of available possibilities become greater and greater as the universe grows older until it becomes impossible to follow the chain of possibilities backward. All this while the universe is deterministic and still remains deterministic.   The force driving the generation of possibilities I look upon as Quality. This is exactly the same function that the second law of thermodynamics has. I think that if Pirsig had called his book "The Metaphysics of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" it would have been a dull thud. He needed a more interesting title, thus "The Metaphysics of Quality"   Note that the generation of possibilities opens the door to "pull causation" as opposed to "push causation". This "pull causation is still operating today. The universe is still deterministic even though the complexity makes it seem that we have free will. All of the patterns from the beginning of the universe and their products as well as all of the patterns that have been generated since the advent of awareness and sentience are acting deterministically on us and are not random. They seem so to us because of complexity. We effectively are deterministic and have free will at the same time.   In this view all is moral because all is generated by Quality acting on the functioning of the universe. All has value and some function of the "Truth". As the patterns generated by dynamic and static quality act upon the universe and us they generate our individual "truths" which are transitory "truths" and are used to establish a further understanding of the "truth". Each individual"s "truth" will interact with other individual"s "truths". I don't think that we will ever reach a universal "truth" but will continue to grow in "truth".   Diana,   I believe you have misread what Pirsig had to say about indians. I live in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capitol of the Cherokee nation and I find that his interpretation of Indian behavior is pretty accurate. It is the white americans who tend to be loud and vulgar in European eyes. I find the Indians to be pretty much as he described them.  They are not shy and reticent although it may seem that way. Ken Clark