From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 14 2005 - 01:08:23 GMT
DMB said ..
"Reality is nothing but value / quality"
I tend to believe that too, that's why I'm on MoQ, but ...
When Scott asked:
Was there consciousness before the biological level came into being?
DMB answered:
Yes, there is consciousness before the biological level. The
biological level is a construct of the intellect ....
I say "The Bilological Level" may be a construct of (Pirsig's)
intellect, but are you saying you believe biology itself (eg brain
cells) is not a pre-requisite for consciousness (eg mind) ?
Personally, I live in hope that the elements of consciousness that our
brains marshall into thoughts and awareness, do actually exist in
physics beyond and between minds / brains, but that involves a fairly
broad idea of consciousness itself as distinct from intellect.
Ian
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:54:01 -0700, David Buchanan
<DBuchanan@classicalradio.org> wrote:
> 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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