Hi Richard, Diana, Squad (Horse, Platt and Magnus too on fuzziness
issue),
Richard B. wrote:-
>Wow. I really like the idea of Patterns of Value
>actually being patterns of evaluation.
I admit to being pretty proud of that too. In my humble opinion, my
contribution of 2nd November was altogether one of my best so far. Like
Richard and Donny, I also prefer ZAMM over Lila. This is partly because
of inconsistencies in the latter, but mostly it is a Romantic thing.
Diana asked:-
>Well let's have it out then ... may I ask precisely what difficulties
and then we can see whether we can resolve them or not?
Jonathan:-
>>Lightening can "choose" to strike one tree rather than another.
>>That's inorganic arbitration of the biological level, the basis of
>>Darwinian "natural selection".
>
Diana:-
>This shows that inorganic values can destroy biological ones.
>Yes it happens. But why is that a difficulty for the MoQ?
I don't think it should be a problem. But Pirsig says that it is immoral
for the inorganic level to determine biological patterns, which could
mean that evolution by natural selection is immoral.
Diana:-
>So you say that there are "difficulties" with Pirsig's five moral
codes.
I can illustrate this from material quoted by Diana on 1st Nov:-
>From chp 13
>"First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of
>biological life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes
>that established the supremacy of the social order over biological life
>...."
In this, Pirsig separates between patterns of value, which make up the
MoQ levels, and moral codes which mediate between them. This contradicts
something Pirsig wrote in Chapter 30 of Lila which I previously quoted
on 1st August:-
Pirsig wrote
"A chair, for example, is not composed of
atoms of substance, it is composed of
dharmas.
This statement is absolute jabberwocky
to a conventional subject-object
metaphysics. How can a chair be
composed of individual little moral
orders? But if one applies the
Metaphyisics of Quality and sees that a
chair is an inorganic static pattern and sees
that all static patterns are composed of
value and that value is synonymous with
morality, then it all begins to make sense."
That goes extremely well with my "patterns of evaluation". However, the
Chapter 13 quote makes little sense if moral codes and value patterns
are synonymous.
>And the first difficulty is that lower levels can evaluate and at times
overcome higher levels?
I went over that before. I don't have a problem with it, but I think
that Pirsig does!
>And the second one is that the levels are arbitrary?
I already stated that I agree with Donny that there may be more than one
way to create a hierarchy of levels. This is not to say that Pirsig's 4
levels are not real. The 7 colours of the rainbow we identify are
perectly real, though we could equally well make an alternative division
of the spectrum into 5 or 8 colours.
>
>Clarification of the problem is 90% of the solution.
... and fuzzification is the remaining 10%.
Let's go back to Pirsig's moral codes mediating between levels. If we
regard moral codes as patterns of value/evaluation just like those
within the levels, it creates a continuous spectrum. That's what I
believe the July discussion on fuzzy logic was all about.
Best regards to all,
Jonathan
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