Hi Jonathan & Roger:
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
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
At the end of his talk, “Subjects, Objects, Data and Values” Pirsig
specifically states that what is meaningless can nevertheless have value.
PIRSIG
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. That also might be why Bohr never mentioned it.
However I think that this avoidance of The Conceptually Unknown should be
revised. It is like saying that the number zero is unacceptable to
mathematics because there's nothing there. Mathematics has done very well
with the number "zero" despite that fact. The Conceptually Unknown, it
seems to me is a workable intellectual category for the description of nature
and it ought to be worked more. As a starting axiom I would say, "Things
which are intellectually meaningless can nevertheless have value." I don't
know of an artist who would disagree with that. Certainly not Rene Magritte.
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.
Platt
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