Hi Bodvar,
>Richard B
>Nice to meet you and welcome to the discussion. No, the
>INTERACTION-SENSATION-EMOTION-REASON thing is purely of
>my own making (with a little help from Magnus Berg on the
>"Interaction" part if I remember correctly).
>
>It came about after Maggie Hettinger had forwarded her "mediation"
>idea (hope I haven't misinterpretated it Maggie) and Hugo Alroe
>Fjelsted "representation" from the Autopoietics of Varela and
>Maturana (same to you Hugo); a kind of metaphysics that says that
>there is no object reality only (subjective) representation.
Well, actually my defintion of the levels back in the early days sprang
from my reading of Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics, combined with
Pirsig's taking value or quality as basic in metaphysics. One important
aspect of taking quality or value as basic is, I believe, that it leads to
a relationary kind of ontology (as opposed to an atomistic or 'thingish'
ontology). Peirce worked on a relationary logic, and his semiotics is tied
in with this.
One basic characteristic of organismic life, is that an organism embodies a
representation of its world. Even the simplest bacteria has the ability to
move towards food, and this means that it must somehow 'know' food from
non-food, that it embodies a representation of food. 'Fittness' is a
neo-darwinian term for this knowledge of the world.
So, organismic life involves representation, while there was no
representation in the non-biological world. This means representation is a
possible distinction between the first and the second level.
>From other sources, I have come to see the representation of self -
self-reflection, self-awareness, the ability to 'take a mental step out and
look upon oneself from without' - as a distinctive feature of the
intellectual level.
Together this makes for an distinction of three levels, the in-organic,
biological and intellectual. I tried out 'mutual representation' for the
social level, but it didn't really work out. Or at least it lead to a view
of the social level which did not correspond well with Pirsig's use.
I still use this distinction between the levels, though, because I find
that it provides a unified understanding which ties in with other parts of
my way of thinking.
>Autopoietics sounds like subjectivism, and as the MOQ starts by
>rejecting both objects and subjects the Quality is not identical to
>it and my list is not to be taken as an "inner" experience in
>contrast to an "outer", but out of a need to compress the various
>levels' value into one expression through which they mediate
>their value.
I believe autopoietics (or at least some of the autopoiesis folks) has
indeed fallen into some kind of idealistic fallacy. But I disagree with
your saying that MOQ rejects subjects and objects. MOQ rejects the
subject-object split as a basic metaphysical distinction, but this does not
mean that we have to do away with these very useful concepts. You do have a
computer in front of you, don't you? How could I ask this question without
making use of the concepts of object (computer) and subject (you)? And
don't bother repeating the undivided experience mantra, because I do agree
with that too ;-) But still, even if experience is primary to the
subject-object distinction, I find it hard to manage without the concept of
a goal-directed subject.
Should I practice more Zen?
Regards,
Hugo Fjelsted Alroe
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