Hi Platt and All!
There is allot of good stuff to chew on here! ;)
Summary: Consciousness emerges from an organic pattern of nerve
cells and synapses whose function is to draw in Dynamic Quality from
the environment to create inner experience that serves the value needs
of the organism.
However, intuition tells me this is a little narrow?
This is a 'one replicator' model of evolution, and i prefer the, 'two
replicator' model of DNA and Memes.
On the two replicator model, large brain size and language is meme driven and
serves no genetic advantage. (Gene/meme co-evolution involved genetic
advantage to begin with when such evolution was vertical - parent to
offspring. But now memes enjoy horizontal evolution - anyone/artefact to
anyone/artefact, which genes can't track.)
It does serve social and intellectual patterns though.
This corresponds closely to Pirsig's hierachy.
In either case, we are dealing with patterns, and patterns respond to DQ as
you know and do not require such as i to tell you.
But 'i' am a process and exist for a brief DQ response.
(I'm not a tortoise from Galapagos or a span of geological time.)
>From your summery:
The 'environment' you envisage may be DQ?
'Consciousness' may be patterned responses - responding ultra fast to DQ?
(There being no ultimate division between these two arbitrary realms.)
So, to universalise your summery:
DQ creates patterns which respond to DQ.
(Iteration of above = evolution = higher quality.)
Microstructural models of the brain do not reveal political values or
preferences for tea or coffee? No revelations about sense of humour or
quadratic solutions? No central 'I.'
Cheers!
Squonk. :-)
In a message dated 7/20/01 11:12:05 PM GMT Daylight Time, pholden@sc.rr.com
writes:
<< Subj: MD Consciousness Explained
Date: 7/20/01 11:12:05 PM GMT Daylight Time
From: pholden@sc.rr.com (Platt Holden)
Sender: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
Reply-to: moq_discuss@moq.org
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Hi All:
The following is an attempt at explaining consciousness in terms of
the MOQ.
Summary: Consciousness emerges from an organic pattern of nerve
cells and synapses whose function is to draw in Dynamic Quality from
the environment to create inner experience that serves the value needs
of the organism.
Of all the mysteries yet to be solved, consciousness leads the list.
There have been numerous attempts at a "scientific" explanation with
Daniel Dennett’s "Consciousness Explained" perhaps the top
contender. Unfortunately for science, Dennett’s explanation proved
less than convincing. When his book came out it made a slight stir,
then quickly faded.
Not that we can presume to do any better. But we certainly can do just
as well by using the MOQ as the starting point, beginning with the
basic premise that the world is not split between mind and matter
(consciousness/substance), but between Dynamic Quality and stable
patterns of value.
Let us acknowledge at the outset that we must accept division in order
to acquire linguistic (as opposed to artistic) understanding. The moral
imperative of the intellectual level is: "Divide." We cannot speak of
consciousness without referring to such divisions as interior/exterior,
inner/outer, private/public, etc., which, as Squonk has pointed out,
derive from the subjective/objective root. Our language is so SOM
infected that one can hardly speak without violating MOQ premises.
But, instead of using the SOM division of mind/matter we can use the
MOQ division of Dynamic and static Quality and see where it leads us.
With our MOQ glasses on, the brain is seen as an organic value
pattern of nerve cells and synapses--a basic arrangement that creates
an organism’s inner experience. This nerve-synapse prototype has
served the survival and procreation needs of a million creatures, from
bed bugs to grizzly bears, for millions of years, growing as the needs of
the organism grows and always acting in concert with other body forms
such as the digestive and reproductive organs.
The nerve-synapse pattern represents the environment to the creature
in the manner necessary to support that creature’s life. Although the
world a fish experiences is far different from the world a ferret
experiences, the fundamental nerve-synapse design is the same in
both.
Now according to Pirsig, the world experienced, whether by worm or
wombat, includes Dynamic Quality—the creative life force—if for no
other reason than DQ pervades the environment. It is my contention
that just as the lungs, stomach and other major body prototypes draw
upon the environment to create a organism’s life sustenance, so the
nerve-synapse prototype draws from Dynamic Quality to create a
organism’s experience.
Would the force that created life exclude itself from the pattern of life it
created? I think not. Instead, it gave every creature a "dim
apprehension" of itself. In the beginning, the dim apprehension was
very dim indeed, practically nonexistent. But under the influence of DQ,
the nerve-synapse pattern grew to draw in more and more of DQ to
itself, resulting in a progression of experience from apprehension to
sensation to perception to symbols and ultimately to concepts.
Let’s be clear. Full blow conceptual experience or consciousness as
we know it took eons to appear. Low-life forms experience their
environments (including DQ) as simple sensations, to use Bo’s term.
But (and it’s a big but), we can be reasonably certain that every life
form, even that lowliest, know what’s good for it.
I realize in saying this that I run the risk of anthropomorphizing. But
Konrad Lorenz, the famous Austrian zoologist once wrote, "What the
organism learns about its environment can be expressed in the simple
phrase, ‘It’s better here’ or ‘It’s not so good here.’"
Given that the concept of "good" or Quality occurs in the earliest stages
of life. (I would argue, and have, that it arrived with the Big Bang, but
let’s not go into that hoary issue here), we can identify at least two
specifics--good to live and good to procreate. So experience at the
lowest level of life comes with value bonded with it. Valuation and
experience are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin. You
cannot pry them apart, boosting my thesis that the nerve-synapse
prototype, by drawing on DQ, creates an organism’s experience. Life
cannot survive without knowing (experiencing) what’s good for it, and
survival, after all, is the name of the game.
Already this post is much too long. But permit me to add some more
ideas that stem from the premise that consciousness was created by
and is a reflection of DQ.
Somewhere along the evolutionary line, the benefits for survival of
social cooperation became evident. Just how it started is a mystery, but
if Pirsig’s evolutionary theory is correct, a collection of individual
patterns in some cases provided more opportunities for versatile
reactions to Dynamic Quality than individuals acting alone
Such seems to be the case in the early days of hunting/gathering
nomadic human tribes when the sense of an individual self was nearly
nonexistent, we are told. The social level was pervasive. The
intellectual level characterized by the subject/object division was yet to
come. DQ consciousness was best accessed by a collective
endeavor. What was good for the tribe was good for the survival of
individuals, no questions asked or permitted.
In the meantime, the value pattern we call the brain grew larger under
the influence of DQ, expanding the range of experience from the
immediate present moment to include memory of past experience and
projection of experience into the future. From an MOQ perspective, the
nerve-synapse pattern (brain) grew in response to Dynamic Quality’s
call to freedom. The enlarged pattern allowed the organism to free
itself from total dependence on data gathered in the immediate
moment. For the first time, an organism could respond to an imagined
future and plan ahead. Consciousness as we know it was born. And
from the paintings in the caves at Lascaux we know DQ was not only
accessed, but for the first time acknowledged as a creative force.
Further, song and dance exhibited by primitive tribes indicates
recognition of DQ as a force by early man.
According to Pirsig, the intellectual level arose in service of the social
level. Division of labor proved beneficial to the group. Once the idea of
divide-to-survive gained credence, the intellectual level took off and
hasn’t stopped since. Individualism arose and freedom became not
simply a dim apprehension, but a recognized high good. The nerve-
synapse pattern that began as weak response to DQ in the distant
past had mushroomed under the influence of DQ to include more and
more of DQ within it’s purview. Consciousness as we know it today,
ever ready to respond to DQ’s call, came into being.
Except something went awry. By dividing experience, the nerve-
synapse pattern made a crucial error. Overjoyed by its new found
freedom of self (and rise of ego), it divided experience not as it should
have into Dynamic and static good, but self and substance, mind and
matter, subject and object. Thus the idea of reality independent of DQ
consciousness was born. A world without DQ was not only considered
possible, but probable. Values became secondary to so-called
valueless, objective facts. Science came to the forefront with no need
for, and therefore no recognition of DQ. In the eyes of science, DQ
doesn’t exist.
Yet, in spite of the onslaught of the valueless intellectual level and its
overwhelming successes in manipulating helpless static patterns, the
transcendence attributes of the Good, the True and the Beautiful—the
quintessential characteristics of Dynamic Quality—have never
disappeared from DQ consciousness. At times they (especially the
Good and the Beautiful) have receded into the background,
overwhelmed by SOM. But the growing yearning among mankind for
spiritual rebirth suggests DQ consciousness is returning to its roots
and beginning to flower again as it did during great creative periods of
the past such as the Greek Republic, the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment.
Platt
>>
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