Dan, All
Thanks for your comments,
> I asked RMP about one of his annotations in LC on whether the MOQ is human
> specific in regards to a comment made there but in the same manner which you
> seem to suggest here. He replied:
>
> "Anders is slipping into the materialist assumption that there is a
> huge world out there that has nothing to do with people. The
> MOQ says that is a high quality assumption, within limits. One of
> its limits is that without humans to make it that assumption
> cannot be made. It is a human specific assumption. Strictly
> speaking, Anders has never heard of or ever will hear of anything
> that isn’t human specific."- RMP from Lila's Child, print edition
>
> Like Bohr said about us being trapped in language, I take this to mean we
> are trapped in the human form. We will never experience anything that is
> non-human specific.
3WD
Those slippery assumptions ! When Pirsig is in Jame's pragmatism mode
all is assumptions, human assumptions, and that is acceptible and a
given. So the difficult task becomes: What are the "high quality
assumptions" and where are the "limits"?
In the first discussion thread in Lila's Child "More Quality, More
Levels" [Aug 97] when Bo says,
> As to the 1.[vague borderline between the different static levels] I would say that this
>doesn’t endanger the Quality idea. According to it, the static patterns
are like
>waves—patterns in an underlying Dynamic medium—different from other
patterns
> but of the same stuff. 2.[No one can tell where matter ends and life begins], or
> where an 3 [organism ends and a society starts] (a body can be regarded as a
> 4[society of cells]), nor the difference between communal cooperation and cultural
> activities. Still, one recognizes it when one encounters the experience itself.
Pirsig comments to the numbered [ ] by Bo were:
1. This seems to be a recurrent objection to the MOQ, It occurs, I
think, because I didn't get into enought detail on these borders. I'll
try to do so now as question of vagueness come up.
2. Life is matter that has been configured by DNA. The distinction is
very sharp.
3. In the MoQ all organisms are objective. They exist in the material
world. All societies are subjective. The exist in the mental world.
Again the distinction is very sharp. For example, the "President of the
United States" is a social pattern. No objective scientific instrument
can distinguish the President of the U.S. from anyone else.
4. This is a stretch that seems to destroy the meaning of the word
"society" one could say " an atom is a society of electrons and
protons", but that weakens the meaning of the word without gaining anything.
Further on in another thread when Magnus says:
> Or, you choose simple organic cells to form
> one sheep! So what level does the sheep belong to?
Pirsig responds: "Using the MOQ description of biology as objective and
society as subjective, it is clear that sheep are biological. A herd of
sheep is also biological."
3WD
So Pirsig is very clear in his assumptions. The top two levels "exist
[exclusively]in the [human] mental world."
This lead me to conclude that according to the MOQ there is a limit on
any future evolution to higher levels value by anything other humans. Or
possibly another interpretation is that if that step happens or is
happening we will never be aware of it. My question was and is: "Is
this a high quality assumption?" A reasonable limit?
3WD
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