On 6 Apr 2002 at 23:38, Wim Nusselder wrote:
> Dear Bo,
> In your 2/4 17:43 +0200 posting you make it seem as if the evolution
> of value levels is a more or less gradual development. Every new type
> of patterns of values starts as a pattern of values of the previous
> type and can only be recognized as a new type in retrospect. How do
> you square this with: 'Static patterns of value are divided into four
> systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social patterns and
> intellectual patterns. ... although the four systems are exhaustive
> they are not exclusive. They all operate at the same time and in ways
> that are almost independent of each other. ... they are not
> continuous. They are discrete. They have very little to do with one
> another. Although each higher level is built on a lower one it is not
> an extension of that lower level. Quite the contrary. The higher level
> can often be seen to be in opposition to the lower level, dominating
> it, controlling it where possible for its own purposes. ... An
> excellent analogy to the independence of the levels ... is the
> relation of hardware to software in a computer.' ('Lila' chapter 12)
> Does software start as a rebel piece of hardware??? Does a novel start
> as a rebel piece of software???
OK Wim, these two views juxtaposed looks incompatible and I have
chosen to focus on the part where Pirsig speaks about each level
starting as a pattern of the lower "going off on a purpose of its own",
which I find more true moqish than the hardware/software analogy. The
SOM divide is between mind and matter (software/hardware ) while the
MOQ divide is dynamic/static NOT inside the static half so it becomes
misleading to compare those two different aspects of the two
metaphysics.
Admittedly the rebel term is not found in LILA but "...going off on a
purpose of its own" is what a rebel does. But over to another thing:
Pirsig speaks about the first patterns of what became a new level being
"....in the service of its parent level". This aspect is mentioned by some
as dubious. We may point to such a relationship in connection with the
social growth from Biology and the intellectual from Society, but the
early life forms "in the service" of Matter? Well, anyway I think there is
one such link and I will toss in my suggestion here ...soon. In the
meantime your comments are welcome
Whoops you go on:
> I prefer to see it this way:
> Patterns of values allow for exceptions to the pattern. We are talking
> about values, not causal determinations, and a pattern is still
> recognizable when a relatively small (but sizeable) percentage of the
> experience deviates from the pattern. The exceptions can be either
> degenerative (starting the decay of the pattern, its falling back to
> the lower level of value) or Dynamic (a jump to the next higher level
> of value, which may or may not yet latch on to that next level).
> According to me it is the exceptions to lower level patterns of values
> that form patterns on the next level of value. It is not a whole
> pattern of values that can be (first) part of one level and (then)
> jump to the next level.
No, disagreement here dear Wim, to bring it down to some concrete
examples: The very first strands of matter starting to replicate was
EXCEPTIONAL in contrast to the inert stuff around it. Some maybe
DEGENERATIVE in the sense of not making it further, but I don't
postulate any cause other than the dynamic migration away from the
static. Still, in the lower fringes of the biological level you see the
difficulty of finding the leap from the inorganic and I know that biologists
have a hard time telling living from dead when it comes to the extreme.
Yet life is different from matter, somehow these two overlap.
> I wrote 17/3 23:01 +0100:
> 'I agree with your vision of the intellectual level growing from the
> social level by utilizing an ambiguous social pattern of values.
> Language may be that ambiguous social pattern of values. Ritual is
> another candidate.' I should have wrote that the intellectual level
> grows from the social level by utilizing an ambiguous phenomenon:
> experience that can be recognized both as part of social patterns of
> values and as part of intellectual patterns of values. The patterns
> themselves are either social or intellectual and never both.
I agree, but as with the biology/inorganic example it's only later that the
upper level's value can be identified ...as such. The lower level will
claim "ownership" far into the higher, yes, in fact it NEVER recognizes
any upper level, but we from a MOQ p.o.v.sees this.
> Cf.
> 'bits' in a computer: they can be recognized both as part of a
> hardware pattern of voltage levels in electronic circuits and as part
> of a software pattern of basic information. Or compare the famous
> picture that can either be recognized as that of a young woman or as
> that of an old woman looking in the other direction (and one never
> sees both simultaneously): the phenomenon is ambiguous, the patterns
> one recognizes are not.
Right, even if I don't know who you ague with?:-)
Bo
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