Hi Bodvar, Squad,
Jonathan:-
>I think our ethical sense is probably not highly different from that of
> previous generations. The problem is not the ethics, but their
potential
> vulnerability due to the fact that they have no metaphysical basis in
> dialectical (SOM) thought.
Bodvar:-
>Matter of factly, Jonathan, I agree one hundred percent with what
>you say above. IMO it's our "old" case of the MOQ being too general
>to use for "mundane" purposes; good old SO-ethics (which to me is
>Intellect's value level) suffice.
I'm glad that we partly agree, but I don't quite agree on the
sufficiency of SO-ethics, because I don't think there is really such a
thing. Pirsig discussed the divorce of Ethics from Reason in ZAMM, and
traced it back to Aristotle.
A major point of the MoQ is to reverse this split. To call it "too
general" is to say that ethics is peripheral. Please Bodvar, don't do
that!
>I agreed to all of the rest in your post , but must hasten to
>
>Sun, 8 Nov where you write:
[snip]
>> Biology
>> doesn't fight against the inorganic level. The biological patterns
>> selected are the ones which make better and more harmonious use of
>> the inorganic (and other biological) resources available. Organisms
>> out of harmony with their surroundings are selected against.
>It doesn't? Really Jonathan! Inorganic values have nowhere allowances
>for LIFE written into them.
Bodvar, I stated in a recent post:-
>...It's something of a paradox that just by
>following inorganic values, molecules arrange themselves into patterns
>of value at higher levels. I'm currently working on an essay on just
>this point.
Inorganic patterns are certainly consistent with life and can even
promote life. But we go off track when we ask "do they VALUE life?".
Life is the higher level arbitrator playing the inorganic against the
inorganic. The most primitive cell membrane is a selection device
letting in some molecules, excluding others. Once you have that and a
hereditary mechanism, life is established.
...
>Life, it is as mysterious to-day as in the first day of Darwin's
>theory and a gaping hole in the present evolution theory, but is
>eminently covered up.
There's no shortage of ideas about how life MIGHT have first emerged.
What we lack is a means to distinguish between them. This isn't a hole
in evolution theory - it lies outside of it.
[snip]
Bodvar:-
>What is it that motivates MATTER TO BECOME ALIVE if biology
>states again and again that "survival" is necessary: matter doesn't
>want LIFE!!. You say that existence isn't moving anywhere in
>particular ...
That's not quite it. At the level of the simplest inorganic components,
they keep on doing what they always do. Some people might even call
their behaviour random. But the progression to ever higher levels of
order is an emergent property of the ensemble.
>except just moving, and that's OK, but what drives even
>the moving nowhere?
Moving nowhere uses up no potential. Still air is made up of ever-moving
molecules, and yet the overall average direction of movement is nowhere.
You don't need anything external to drive it. And yet, as soon as you
make the system just a tiny bit more complicated by introducing a
variety of different molecules which can react chemically, the whole
system suddenly realises a potential to drift towards order. I find this
fascinating.
This is all straight physics, yet MoQ has this to say about it:-
The VALUE of organised behaviour is not in the system itself
(objective), nor in the observer (the subject), but is the interaction
between them. Objectively, evolution is random. Only in a larger context
does it have value.
Jonathan
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