To: Platt and Jonathan and Squad
From: Roger
Re: The Nature of Patterns
PLATT WROTE:
I don’t mean to butt in on your interesting discussion of random patterns but
feel obliged to point out something Pirsig said that contradicts Jonathan:
JONATHAN WROTE
I’ve been pushing the Quality=Meaning agenda one of my first posts in 1998,
in which I rephrased Rigel’s question, “Does Lila have quality?” “Does Lila
have meaning?” The answer is obvious - she *means* something to both
Phaedrus and Rigel.
PLATT WROTE
At the end of his talk, “Subjects, Objects, Data and Values” Pirsig
specifically states that what is meaningless can nevertheless have value.
PIRSIG QUOTE
It seems to me that a keystone in a bridge between the Metaphysics of
Quality and Complementarity may be established if what has been called the
"unmeasured phenomenal object" is now called the "The Conceptually
Unknown" and what is called "Dynamic Quality" is also called "The
Conceptually Unknown." Then the two come together. I would guess that the
Conceptually Unknown is an unacceptable category in physics because it is
intellectually meaningless and physics is only concerned with what is
intellectually meaningful.
ROGER JUMPS BACK IN:
I am not sure I see the disagreement. We are talking about the measure or
value of patterns, especially their intellectual value. I liked the way
'meaning' worked in Jonathan's rewrite of my sentence... "A logically
consistent model of reality that simplifies, and that identifies patterns
correlating with the features being modeled, is of greater meaning than an
unpatterned, random model."
I would agree with you that 'Meaning' is not a very good substitute for DQ,
and it probably doesn't work all that well for expressing inorganic, social
or biological value either. But I will let Jonathan respond to that.
PLATT
As for patterns, the issue for me is whether they exist “out there”
independent of us (objective) or do we create them (subjective)? I tend
toward
the latter view, but am open to be persuaded otherwise.
ROGER
Well, you have come to the right place. That really is a central topic of
our discussion. Here is a montage of my recent response to Jonathan on the
issue.
"[Patterns] are simplifications of experience based on large scale general
features
of reality. We have evolved over billions of years to be experts at quick
and dirty pattern detection. Patterns are in essence simplified, generalized
models of reality. They are not the reality they describe, but they can
correlate with it.......
Reality, or experience, certainly has general
features that we form models or patterns of. And these patterns should of
course not be dismissed as imaginary. Philosophers could argue forever over
whether or not reality is a figment of imagination, but surely we will all
agree that imagination definitely is a figment of reality. On the other hand,
man is the measure of pattern, as we choose which features of reality to
attend to, to emphasize, to ignore, and to model."
I would say that reality or experience exists, but that it by no means
independent of us. The term I have been using lately to reference attributes
of this reality has been 'features.' Patterns are not a property of reality
(as Pirsig says in Lila), they are a property of models of reality. However,
a characteristic measure of the quality of a pattern is its correlation with
the features of reality. Therefore, neither 'objective' nor 'subjective'
capture the nature of a high quality model of reality within the MOQ. A
model or pattern that suggests fire is cold would be of very low value
because it does not correlate with the features of our experience.
But as you know, I very well may be wrong.....
Rog
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