Kenneth,
Thanks for that, but didn't you know my name is "Puzzled Elephant" now?
Things evolve preeeeetty smartish around here.
What can I say? It looked like I was trying to end the thread - far from
it. I don't think that I've really any right to object, wholesale, to the
discussion of Memes in MOQ discuss. (There's a whole bunch of reasons for
that, not the least if which is that I'm coming in half way through).
Instead, I think I was trying to provoke some kind of articulate explanation
of what Prisig and Memes have to do with each other, and I've certainly got
that, from Rog, and now yourself.
And I'm not sure what I, as an ignoramus who has only ever read Philosophy,
is going to be able to tell a Memeticist about his feild. Nothing, at a
quess. On the other hand, maybe there might be something useful that we can
both get out of this, and what marks out the good guys is that they keep on
looking.
So, let's insert some Socratic dialogue into this posting, with you as
socrates, of course, and me as the boring speechmaker who ends up tying
himself in knots:
> If I understand you correctly, you refer to the notion that " the concept
> of
> Quality " is a constant fundamental idea in the Universe.
> Of course, that can be true, and in MOQ discussions so far, the impression
> is
> that Quality, Dynamic Quality that is, can 't be descirbed, seen, felt,
> heard etc.
Almost. There are all sorts of dangers in talking about 'idea' and
'concept' here, not to mention 'foundations', connected with the fact that
such words can carry a huge baggage of assumed distinctions, when what we
want to say might rejects those ways of cutting up the world, or apply them
differently. Maybe I should spell some dangers out. "the concept of
quality" - confusingly this can be read two ways: (1) as indicating the
concept which is distinct from the reality it is a concept of, and (2) as
indicating that the concept is the reality know as quality. (1) is just
fine, but the kind of deification of concepts that (2) represents appalls
me. Now, "Fundamental Idea"? - Ideas are (in English at least - forget
Platonic Greek) things that minds have: the world can't have an 'idea' all
on it's own. Thus the notion of a fundamental idea enshrines a mind-world
Dualism which I think we should be suspicious of for a long list of reasons
(scepticism, the mind-body problem, a problematice mediative role for
language, etc.). Secondly, and this point is more relevant, if Quality is
just an idea, it's pretty hard to see how it can also be fundamental. My
ideas are not yours. No, I think what's needed is a term without these
kinds of connotations. Maybe 'universal' would do it, in that it yeilds a
sharp analytic distinction (or cut) between (particular) objects which have
Quality, and (universal) Quality which just is Quality. It's a suggestion.
I want to add that on first reading ZATAOMM, I wondered a bit about the
"dynamic" part in "dynamic quality". I think that Prisig means that it is
dynamic in that it's a source of power, a strong force changing everything
and everyone in it's light (that's a platonic metaphor creeping in, but it's
not out of place - Rog?), while drawing everything (our technology,
including what you call memes) onwards. I suppose in this Prisig means
something which is like both the form of the Good and the Eros within us
which draws us to it, the two combined. But there's another way that people
might take 'dynamic': as if it were the dynamic quality itself which was
being recast in the light and remade in the heat of some great power.
Perhaps Prisig sometimes talks of dynamic quality in this way to, which
might be confusing, because then it seems like quality is changing in the
light of quality. I'd prefer to think that Prisig didn't mean that. -this
will provoke some....
>
> Quality can be identified by reactions of
> whatever in the presence of Quality, in your own words_ we should react
> upon the presence of Quality by constant inventing new technologies !?
Yes that seems right, and seems true to the art of Motorcycle Maintainance.
> but the captain of your ship would not have thought Vancouver changed, no_
> in order to get close as possible to the Quality of getting to his
> destination,
> his memetic framework changed the notion in which he sees Quality and he
> changed his behavior and therefor his heading accordingly.
But for you his memetic framework just is the way in which he sees Quality -
yes? - I mean the one doesn't change the other, it is the other.
Look, I'm not sure that there is a notion of quality which changes here. It
isn't that Vancouver at x degrees off the bow is seen as BEING Quality at
one moment, and Vancouver at y degrees off the bow is seen as BEING Quality
the next. No, in both cases the location of Vancouver is seen as HAVING
Quality, and that's a hell of a difference (perhaps the most important
distinction in all philosophy). Prisig talks about this doesn't he? If
sleeping and eating weren't of some remaining importance I'd go looking for
quotes. Cue MD.
>
> Just for the record here, technology aimed at itself is not bunkum, quite
> the
> opposite. In memetic terms technologies would be aiming for Quality, but
> in order to do so they need instruments to work with. In memetics, we see
> the humans and the human mind as those hosts/ instruments.
Hm. Well I can't see the human mind as an instrument, because it's our
paradigm case for a user of instruments, though which the world 'instrument'
(and 'technology' at large) has the meaning it has. Hosts neither. If you
take away all the technology, even the tiniest bit of intellectual
technology like basic synthetic judgements, then it doesn't seem to me that
there's anthing there you could call a hosting Mind, still less a Person.
Our 'self' is a kind of artifact, after all. And I don't follow on the
technology aimed at itself idea either. 'Technology' means 'tool', and if
all the factories in the world were just tools for keeping factories running
(which some industries probably are) then they'd be pretty useless (which
some are), and anti-quality (which some are). At some basic level, a tool
is a tool because we can do something wanted with it. But more than likely
I've got the wrong end of the tool here. Put me right.
Regards to all from:
Elephant, P.
(There you go ROG, it had to happen. Puts you in mind of all those zoo
programs on the TV. Children and Animals. Argh.)
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