[Arlo] I see "betterness" as the reason anything moves from point A to point B. Can you think of anything that moves from A to B because of "worseness"? Or, if its a completely indifferent state, why move?
[Jos] Err, Jos scratches head.... Try this: [Arlo] Don't scratch your head, I think this is straightforward Pirsig. Consider the amoeba on a petri dish. When acid is placed nearby, it moves. Why? Because of Quality. Or, I could say, because Point B was "better" than Point A. When a carbon atom bonds with an oxygen atom, it does so because of Quality, because bonding was "better" than not bonding. This is all simply stated by Pirsig in ZMM. "The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our environment can understand is that 'Quality is the response of an organism to its environment'". When I said that evolution is the visible manifestation of Quality, this is what I had in mind. With Quality as the response of an organism to its environment, the aggregate of those responses is what we call "evolution". [Jos] Various chambers contain inert (and uncharged, helium, xenon, argon etc) but comercially valuable purified confined gases, dividers are removed such that spontaneously the gases diffuse into one another. Which state is "better", pure usefull substrates or the melange? [Arlo] While I'm sure the gas particles really care about what YOU think is better for them, their mixing indicates that for them "better" is diffused. Our manipulation of inorganic patterns (or biological patterns) for social and intellectual value notwithstanding, I think you are confusing "better" with human-derived social value. [Jos] The only difference is subjective cultural/intellectual value in the eyes of the observer, to whom the resulting spontaneously occurring result is has almost no value as compared with the highly valuable starting point. [Arlo] Well, exactly. But "better" is not just "what's socially or intellectually better for people". A platypus evolved a bill because it was "better" for it to have one than not have one. "We" weren't consulted, because its not just all about "us". "Now this vagueness is removed by sorting out values according to levels of evolution. The value that holds a glass of water together is an inorganic pattern of value. The value that holds a nation together is a social pattern of value. They are completely different from each other because they are at different evolutionary levels. And they are completely different from the biological pattern that can cause the most skeptical of intellectuals to leap from a hot stove. These patterns have nothing in common but the historic evolutionary process that created all of them. But that process is a process of value evolution. Therefore the name "static pattern of values" applies to all." (LILA) I think this may have been the issue Marsha had with regard to my using "betterness" than "Quality". I don't see any difference between these terms. If something moves because of Quality, it moves because of "betterness". The betterness/value/Quality that causes those gas particles to diffuse is different than the betterness/value/Quality that makes a person find greater value in keeping those particles apart. "When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've done so because it's "better" and that this definition of "betterness" -this beginning response to Dynamic Quality-is an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based." (LILA) 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
