Elephant, Roger, Jonathan, all:
Do atoms need to be aware if the MOQ is to hang together as a viable
metaphysics?
To me it is obvious that the MOQ collapses like a house of cards
unless one accepts the notion of an experiential world.
Pirsig states flat out that “Quality is direct experience . . . the primary
reality of the world”
If experience is reality, and reality existed before we arrived on the
scene, then experience must have existed before we arrived on the
scene.
The only question is where?
Elephant and Roger side step the question. Elephant admits of no
experiencing beings other than those immediately in front his nose, a
rather unusual notion to say the least.
Roger allows as how viruses might be aware, but not rocks, thereby
shifting the subject from atoms to rocks which are not comparable.
(Likewise changing the thread to “ Atomic Absurdity” attempts to
bypass the issue by ridicule.)
I have no problem attributing awareness to atoms, quarks and photons
since they act like I and other “experiencing entities” do, that is,
independently of mechanistic cause and effect. As Bertrand Russell
said, “So far as quantum theory can say at present, atoms might as
well be possessed of free will, limited however to one of several
possible choices."
>From Pirsig: “The chemistry of life is the chemistry of carbon. What
distinguishes all the species of plants and animals is, in the final
analysis, differences in the way carbon atoms choose to bond.” (Lila,
Chap. 11)
Pirsig could have said simply, “the way carbon atoms bond.” But he
added the words, “choose to ” and by doing so, made clear the chasm
between the Metaphysics of Quality and the Metaphysics of Subjects
and Objects where everything just “emerged” inexplicably from “rocks.”
Platt
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