From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Mar 12 2005 - 22:54:01 GMT
Scott and all MOQers:
Scott asked:
Was there consciousness before the biological level came into being?
dmb answered:
...the quotes (now below) answer your question. Yes, there is consciousness
before the biological level. The biological level is a construct of the
intellect, which is generated by a prior experience...
"In the MOQ empirical experience begins with Quality which generates
intellectual patterns. One of these intellectual patterns is named 'senses,'
but this pattern is derived from the study of anatomy and is not primary in
the actual empirical process."
"The MOQ agrees that the senses are primary in an anatomical explanation of
[the] empirical process. So the statement in Lila seems correct to me. But
at the cutting edge of the actual Dynamic empirical moment these anatomical
explanations are nowhere to be found."
Scott replied:
So why not just say the answer to my question is "no"? After all, I am
asking, within the intellectual patterns known as the MOQ, is there
awareness before the biological level? Pirsig says there isn't, since for
Pirsig, awareness starts with the biological level. Fine. But then you add
the last bit: "But at the moment of Quality experience "these anatomical
explanations are nowhere to be found". This is how the quotes answer your
question. Yes, there is consciousness before the biological level. The
biological level is a construct of the intellect, which is generated by a
prior experience." Well, that is changing the question and therefore the
answer. Since before any intellectual construct there is this "prior
[Quality] experience", about which absolutely nothing can be said, how can
you even say that it comes before any intellectual construct?
dmb says:
Confusion is your best friend, Mr. Roberts. I answer "yes" and you ask why I
do not answer "no". You assert that Pirsig holds the very position he is
here denying. You assert that my answer has changed the question. Then you
end by complaining that nothing can be said about it despite the fact that
Pirsig and I have just done so. Are you deliberately obfuscating the issue
or are you really that mixed up? Are you asking where experience begins,
where consciousness begins according to the MOQ or not? My answer is aimed
at explaining where it all begins, with the primary empirical experience. It
is called primary BECAUSE that's where it begins. That's what PRIMARY means.
The anatomical explanations will always come later. And that's how one can
say "yes" there is consciousness before the biological level comes into
being. Is that not plain and clear enough?
(I have to bite my tounge hard because respones like this make me want to
scream. I honestly wonder how you could have missed the point twice. Aren't
you at all concerned about my repeated complaints along these lines? Its as
if you WANT me to think you're brain damaged or something. Are you pleading
insanity here or what? I mean, how in the world can you assert that "for
Pirsig, awareness starts with the biological level" while you are looking at
a statement by him in which he says that the senses and the anatomical
explanations "are nowhere to be found" at the start? Its right in front of
you and you can still get it EXACTLY wrong! Anyway...)
Scott continued:
Anyway, sticking within the MOQ, I argue that to claim that there is value
at the inorganic level but not awareness is a very weird idea. It is that
that started this whole sub-thread. And one thing I asked about it is: by
what empirical argument (using the MOQ's definition of empirical: reasoning
about what the senses provide, including something called the "sense of
value") can one claim either that there is or is not value at the inorganic
level? Or that there is or is not awareness?
dmb says:
Who asserts that "very wierd idea"? Not Pirsig, that's for sure. In the MOQ,
even subatomic particles are said to express preferences. In the MOQ, value
is awareness. I mean, it seems there are at least two major misconceptions
contained in your first sentence and you are disputing an assertion that I
don't recall making. In fact, I don't recall anyone making it. So I look at
that sentence and sincerely wonder what the heck you're talking about. In
the third sentence you have inserted a very dubious description of the MOQ's
empiricism. As a result, its hard to make sense of your question. But let me
say this. Pirsig points out that the empirical evidence that we usually
associate with inorganic reality will not change. The dials and readings in
the physics lab are the same as before. But the MOQ takes on such SOM
notions as substance and causation in such a way that those dials and
reading are interpreted differently. Instead of acting according to the laws
of physics, the MOQ describes such behavior as an extremely consistent
patterns of preferences. In other words, ther is value and awareness even at
the inorganic level and I really don't know who says otherwise.
Scott said:
...I am in agreement with Ant that to conflate Intellect with Quality will
confound the MOQ, but of course what I am saying is that the MOQ is, in the
way it treats intellect, bad metaphysics.] ...What I have said is that
Quality and Intellect are two names for the same (non-)thing.
dmb says:
You agree that its confounding to conflate Intellect with Quality AND you
assert that Intellect and Quality are two names that refer to the same
(non-)thing? I don't really want to speand any time trying to untangle that
mess. I just wanted to point out another example of what seems to be an
endless attempt to convince me that you like ride without a helmet and that
you've paid a heavy price for that preference.
Scott:
What I am saying is that *within* the intellectual structure known as the
MOQ is the claim that first there was an inorganic level, then a biological
built on it (thanks to clever use of carbon atoms), then the social built on
the biological, then the intellectual built on the social. So the
intellectual construct known as the MOQ *does* put matter (the inorganic and
biological) before mind (the social and intellectual). Pirsig calls this a
"good idea" (LC #97: "Within the MOQ, the *idea* that static patterns of
value start with the inorganic level is considered to be a good *idea*".)
dmb says:
Well, this is the section of Lila I was talking about. Its is much like the
quotes at the top, the ones that asserts the idealistic position that the
"senses" are part of an "anatomical explanation", but that the idea has to
come first. Take a look at Pirsig's comments directly after #97....
RMP says:
"Within the MOQ, the idea that static patterns of value start with the
inorganic level is considered to be a good idea. But the MOQ itself doesn't
start before sentience. The MOQ, like science, starts with human experience.
Remember the early talk in ZMM about Newton's Law of Gravity? Scientific
laws without people to write them are a scientific impossibility.
....The idea that "something existed before we became sentient" is an idea
that did not exist before we came sentient. It's like the law of gravity in
ZMM.
...In the late 1800's the chicken-and-egg argument about whether ideas
precede inorganic nature or inorganic nature precedes ideas was considered
philosophically important. No one to my knowledge has ever shown that the
idealists who considered ideas to come first have been wrong. The discussion
has since died away.
It is important for an understanding of the MOQ to see that although "common
sense" dictates that inorganic nature came first, actually "common sense"
which is a set of ideas, has to come first. This "common sense" is arrived
at through a huge web of socially approved evaluations of various
alternatives. The key term here is "evaluation," i.e., quality decisions.
The fundamental reality is not the common sense or the objects and laws
approved of by common sense but the approval itself and the quality that
leads to it."
dmb continues:
See? Its a good idea, but that doesn't mean Pirsig just accepts it as the
only idea or even the best idea. In the MOQ, that "good idea" fails when we
move beyond common sense and conventional practicality.
Scott continued:
That is no different from the version of development found in the
intellectual structure known as materialism, except that the MOQ adds
something called DQ to carry out this development, while materialism
ascribes this to chance. A materialist *also* thinks it is a "good idea" to
say that mind developed out of matter. (And, a materialist, in his or her
philosophical moments, is just as likely (especially if s/he is also a
pragmatist) to say: "Instead, nature is a construction of the intellect, a
product of the intellect, synonymous with it in a very real sense.")
dmb says:
In all these quotes we see the same assertion by Pirsig. Namely, that some
ideas can be good ideas even if they are only true up to a certain point.
And in each case we are talking about materialistic ideas being good only up
to a certain point. In any case, what you have done here is basically assert
that Pirsig's idealism is materialism. Despite the fact that Pirsig has
thoroughly attacked the metaphysics of substance and instead asserted that
ideas must come first, you have interpreted the MOQ as a materialism wherein
experience begins with biology. You have everything backwards and upside
down. Confusion is thy name.
Scott asked:
A related question: There are materialists and others who will claim that
their intellectual construct is what it is because they assume a nature that
exists in itself in pretty much the way that their intellectual construct
describes (or at least, that is what they hope for their construct). Take
them as one extreme (call them realists). The opposite extreme is called
nihilism, that our intellectual constructs may, as far we truly know, be
completely arbitrary. Where do you see the MOQ in relation to these
extremes, or alternatively, how do you see the MOQ as escaping this
classification? To put it another way, in relation to Pirsig's LC #97 quote,
what is *not* "within the MOQ", and, if there is anything, how does the MOQ
relate to it? I am, of course, asking how you see the MOQ escaping the
charge of being nihilist, if you don't think it is.
dmb says:
Here you've depicted materialism and nihilism as opposed to each other, even
as extreme polar opposites. I reject that premise. In fact, it seems to me
that materialism and nihilism are totally compatible. It seems to me that
nihilism is only the logical conclusion of materialism. It seems to me that
the post-linguistic turn postmodern pragmatists are an extention of that
kind of nihilism even if they do reject the correspondence theory of truth.
For the materialist, evolution occurs by chance and such a reality has no
inherent value or meaning. For the postmoderist, our linguistic
constructions have been constructed arbitrarily and also have no inherent
value or meaning. In this sense, postmodernism does not solve the problem.
It only extends the problem into new areas. Postmodernism not only fails to
solve the problem, it eagerly insist that none is possible.
The MOQ is pretty much the opposite of materialism and nihilism and, by
contrast, asserts that reality is nothing BUT value. While nihilism denies
the reality of morals and values, except as arbitrary and useful inventions,
the MOQ says that's all there is. Further, all of reality is held together
and grows according to a primary sense of value, by a sense of rightness and
order. (The oldest idea known to man.) The MOQ does not ask, "is it the
Truth with a capital 'T'", as a Western theist might. But Nihilsim seems to
take the denial of divine or absolute "Truth" and conclude that there can be
no truth at all. The result is people saying ridiculous things like, "facts
are overrated". For the postmodern nihilist there is no way to really say
that one thing is better than another, but in the MOQ the idea that we know
betterness immediately and all the time. Everything is built upon that. I'm
not getting very specific or detailed in this explanation because broad
stokes seem to be needed. I mean, asking how the MOQ escapes nihilism
strikes me as a bit like asking how motion escapes rest. Its doesn't seem
like a legitimate question so much as a demonstration of the questioner's
confusion.
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