PUZZLED ELEPHANT TO ROG:
I think I'm getting slowly clearer about evolution and the Metaphysics of
Quality. It's great to find somewhere where we can air thoughts, puzzlement
and all, in the open. I'm appreciative of you're replies, and think we're
making some kind of progress. I've a few thoughts and questions to add....
ELEPHANT (had written):
You're definitely right about modern evolutionary theory, and it's more or
less the 'Ronald Regan' point I made earlier. Well, while I go back and
read some more Prisig, could you perhaps say just a bit more (for the
puzzled) to clearly explain how the MOQ's non-traditional concept of
'evolved' differs from both modern (non-evaluative) evolutionary theory and
the 'survival of the fittest' travesty of biology, and in what sense it
remains a notion of evolution? Is it best to think of our difference from
plants in terms of Evolution, or standing towards Quality?
ROG (had written):
In standard evolutionary theory, everything alive today is considered as
evolved from its common original ancestor.. Men are not viewed as more
evolved than apes. For example, both chimps and men are viewed as equally
evolved from their common proto-chimp/man ancestor.
ELEPHANT (had written):
Quite. Continue.
ROG (had written):
In the MOQ, Pirsig evaluates evolutionary advancement by the freedom and
versatility of a species to not be controlled by static patterns. Pirsig
equates biological patterns with more complexity and versatility as more
moral than those with less complexity and versatility.
The point is that though some patterns evolve toward more versatility and
complexity, not all do. There is nothing inherently wrong with the MOQ's
version of evolution, but it requires explaining.
ELEPHANT (had written):
My previous confusions are somewhat clarified. You're saying that evolution
is, for Prisig, something which can have a direction. That direction can be
determined with respect to the capacity of an organism to escape "static
patterns" through the invention of new answers to technological questions,
which capacity is the "versatility" of a species. Am I warm?
ROG (had written):
Yes, toward DQ, which of course is indefineable. But it is away from static
pattern.
ELEPHANT (had written):
Now, does this return us to a hierarchy of evolution, in which Man
stands at the top because of the 747, or does this return us to a flat plain
of equality, because the 747 is no more of an innovative answer to a
technological problem than, say, the baleen of a whale? You might say the
former, because the rate of technological change is obviously superior in
the airline industry. But, against that, I ask: from what point of veiw is
the staying-the-same-ness of "static patterns" to be judged? From a whale's
point of veiw, the 747 isn't an answer to any real problem, so not to be
counted on the credit side of human evolution. Do you follow?
ROG (had written):
The balleen is quite an achievement, but the difference between
socio/intellectual patterns and the biological quality of a whale is those
with former are aware of and more responsive to quality. Biological
evolution
and responsiveness is (relatively) slow and dumb and blind. Certainly the
relative perspective is man's. We probably shouldn't speak much about
whale's
perspectives. It does seem to be a reasonable assumption that humans -- who
are socio-intellectually capable -- are more dynamic than non
social/intellectual beings.
ELEPHANT *now adds*:
O.K. Well this reasures me, because it suggests that for MOQ consciousness
cannot be something that has itself evolved: rather consciousness apparently
separates two quite different kinds of 'evolution' (united in reality only
be the name 'evolution'): on the one hand the "blind" activity of natural
selection whereby a whale gains a plankton-filtration system, and on the
other the "dynamic" active selection of "socio-intellectually capable" man,
whereby we invent the jet-engine. But in that case, it seems to me that
what separates the one from the other isn't anything to do with the
stability of the pattern or the speed of change: perhaps we can imagine
something, a deadly virus perhaps, which evolves (in the blind sense)
incredibly quickly, more quickly than the whole of Western Medicine (a rare
case where we can all agree on how to measure the speed of evolution, and
say which is 'objectively' quicker). Well now, Medicine here looks more
like the "static pattern" of the two. So what maks' it's evolution a
'higher' kind is just this: not speed or complexity, but the *conscious* or
aware (not "blind") directedness at DQ. This example appears to prove that,
even within mankind's technological 'evolution', the way to indicate the
'higher' states of evolution is to determine which is more consciously aware
of DQ, and not which is more or less a "static pattern". Perhaps really
good awareness of DQ and static patterns can go together (anyone for zen?)?
ELEPHANT (HAD WRITTEN):
I want to be clear about the *decision procedure* a claim that such and such
is more evolved, if such a claim can be made. Otherwise, we simply get the
result that silicon valley is entitled to a high opinion of it's
"versatility" at the expense, say, of jainist monks in India, while the same
also holds in reverse. We don't want 'being evolved' to just amount to
'being the sort of thing I approve of', do we? Do you recall the bit about
the Dolphins in HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy?
ROG (had written):
The judge is "direct everyday experience" according to RMP. This is one of
his tag-lines for DQ. The best IMO. As you will note, it matches well with
James and Zen. You may want to dig more into the later chapters of Lila for
more.
ELEPHANT *now adds*:
I don't think direct everyday experience can be a judge. It can be a
standard, but we have to do the judging, as to whether any concept has a
practical bearing on experience (which is the standard), and that means that
we have to interpret the standard. (Well, doesn't it?) In this way it
doesn't seem to be an answer just to point at things and say 'experience
judges...': experience doesn't judge anything: we are the ones with mouths
and qwerty keyboards. Atleast, I'm puzzled about this.
It seems that it's what we say about immediate experience that counts, not
the flux itself (neither James's flux nor Plato's). Or perhaps we are to
say (as Murdoch would) that the world that we make with our synthetic
judgements is just as much 'direct' and 'immediate' experience as the flux:
the difference between the two being between the passively received (flux)
and the actively conceived (the world of objects). In such a way, immediate
experience could perhaps be a kind of judge, but only by being the
conglomeration of all our synthetic (TECHNEcal) judgements. And even here,
our interpretation, and continual creative *sustainance* of that
conglomerate world intervenes: so WE are the *judges* of the practical, not
experience.
('experience' here means what we create for practicality (for Quality) -
how could it then be the judge of the practical for which we create it?).
An illustration. Pragmatism might be (mis-)read as supporting an
essentially scientific world veiw (I don't simply mean rationalism here,
obviously). But, if we say that pragmatism interprets the meaning of
statements in terms of the difference they make, there are a million
non-scientific world-views which enter into and make just the right kind of
Quality difference in just the right kind of concrete situations for many,
if not most, real men and women. This is something Murdoch is sensitive to
(eg in novel writing: you can't just ignore the charachters who beleive in
the Power of Stones - they too have a Quality tale to tell), while
others.... (Well Peirce is not, I'd think). "Experience decides..." - well
no, we decide, and in the decision, make the experience. "Experience
tells..." would be more accurate: certainly experience is 'decisive' in the
sense of 'telling', or, rather, 'revealing', what we give meaning to.
After all, the difference a proposition makes doesn't have to be a
difference in the existing world of experience: perhaps creating a new world
of experience is just precisely the difference it makes.
ROG (had written):
BTW, why are you so set against Darwinian theory? Why is it a travesty? Is
it because it is a bad idea? Or because it is a good idea about a
discomforting situation? Or is it because it gets applied inappropriately?
(ie the vapid travesty of Social Darwinism.)
ELEPHANT (had written):
It's certainly a very good idea, and I don't find the situation it describes
discomforting, if i correctly understand the description. But I do think
that it gets applied very inappropiately, and the "vapid travesty of social
darwinism" isn't the only form this takes by any means. There are still
people who think that the world is the totality of facts (excluding values),
and Darwinism is often a big part of their anti-metaphysical repetoire. In
their hands, it is a proof that traditional approaches to subjects like
psychology, linguistics, sociology, -morality even- , which have assumed
that each has some special existent subject matter, are wrong headed from
the start, and that the selfish gene (with suitable help from book sales)
can sweep all before it. This is a kind of mirror-image of Social
Darwinsim, whose mistake was to think evolution an evaluative concept
(survival of the "FITTEST"), where nowadays by contrast Darwinsm is used to
GET RID OF any remaining values, by reducing them to the mechanical products
of accident and selection. This extends even to Consciousness. In the UK
at least, the moment anyone so much as mentions Darwin, you can tell
immediately what their ontology is, which works of philosophy they wouldn't
bother reading, and what chat shows they will be likely to appear on in the
near future.
ROG (had written):
You are speaking of subject/object metaphysics. This is the atomist,
newtonian/cartesian type that believes in discrete objective matter built of
cute little building blocks (with names like green charm!) and subjective
thoughts and feelings that mysteriously affect the matter. Really, I think
you are against a way of thinking that evolutionists usually adopt than
against the concept itself.
ELEPHANT *now adds*:
It might seem that way, but what I'm worried (or puzzled) about is how, in
practical terms, the MOQ's reunification of the subject with the subject's
world can defuse the objectionable bits of evolutionary theory, while
retaining a concept of biological evolution that is recognisably the old and
interesting *biological* one. This is why I contrasted two opposing
mistakes of Darwinism: investing too little value (everything equally
evolved, man no better than an amoeba) and investing too much value (Aryans
are the best): where exactly is the right place for our values in the
biological picture of evolution, if there is one? It seems that what we
have been talking about, in the MOQ concept of 'evolution', might be
valuable and true, but that it isn't really a Biological concept of
evolution as such, which is what most people understand by the word
'evolution' in any case... - you see? It puzzles me how one can regard
rationalism as "a way of thinking that evolutionists usually adopt": aren't
you necessarily a rationalist if what you are doing is Biology? Who is the
inventor of Biology? - Aristotle. MOQ evolutionary theory is some other
subject, I think, non-aristotelian, better.
Perhaps you will think this a merely verbal point and just let me use the
word 'biology' differently... But actually there is something, the old old
thing, at stake here. Biology is supposed to be the study of life, so any
biology which is at the same time an evolutionary theory is going to say
that life evolved. I worry about this because to me consciouness is the
interesting and important feature of life, even the definitive one (maybe
Viruses aren't alive). You know (and actually appear to agree with) what I
have to say (below) about the incoherence of supposing that consciousness
evolved. Now it seems to me that MOQ evolutionary theory isn't going to say
something incoherrent like that - so it isn't an evolutionary biology. It's
simple: if it's an evolutionary Biology then it has to say life evolved.
MOQ can't say that life evolved, therefore MOQ can't be, or attach to,
evolutionary biology. QED.
ELEPHANT (had written):
None of this takes away from the fact that Darwin's picture of how the
diversity of life on this planet came about is fundamentally correct. But
that correctness is a scientific correctness, a technological correctness,
like putting the proper threaded bolt onto a screw. And I think that there
is another kind of correctness, another kind of truth. Think about this via
James, if you please. James says: a statement is only really meaningful if
it makes some concrete difference. Well, what about that statement then?
The answer here is bound up in the distinction between analytic statements
and synthetic ones. Darwinism is true, but it is true as a bit of
synthesis, and there can be analytic truths, necessary truths, philosophical
truths, if you like (such as James's), which can take precedence. A
discussion of consciousness would be a good example. One might argue
(synthetically) that consciousness is an evolved phenomena which is a
technological fix for the given technological problems of an
organism/species in the world. On the other hand, one might argue
(analytically) that the whole meaning of 'technological' is dependant on the
distinction between user and the use, which necessarily implies free will
and consciousness, and hence that talk of consciousness as an evolved
technological fix is quite meaningless. Generally, I find Darwinism is used
to avoid facing up to the second, hard, philosophical, kind of thinking
(which I warmly attribute to Prisig). The scientific point of veiw has it's
limits, that is my point. And I think that applies whether your science is
an MOQ cogniscant science or an old fashioned classical rationalism.
ROG (had written):
Agree strongly.
ELEPHANT *now adds*:
Well that makes alteast one!
Good night,
And greetings to Riff,
PzEph
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