From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Mar 20 2005 - 01:56:25 GMT
Scott asked:
Was there consciousness before the biological level came into being?
DMB said:
Yes, there is consciousness before the biological level. The biological
level is a construct of the intellect ....
Ian replied:
"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) ?
dmb says:
Yes. I know, its hard to believe. To assert that experience begins BEFORE
biology is involved sounds insane. Again, the blindspot I keep refering to
is taken as an insult and dismissed, but its not and you shouldn't. A
blindspot occurs when our most basic assumptions about reality will not
allow us to see. That's what SOM does. We absolutely insist that a body with
ears and eyes is a pre-requisite to any kind of experience. But this is
exactly what Pirsig is disputing. He's saying that those anatomical
explanations (sensory empiricism) always follow the primary experience.
There is a whole class of experience we would normally describe as physical
or biological and for the most part I totally buy that explanation. In fact,
we have to assume certain things if we wish to have any friends, but
ultimately the idea that we have bodies is just an idea. Its just a very
good way to explain our experience. The point here is not to suggest that
its all just a dream. Not exactly. Not unless you're willing to grant that
dreams are as real as anything else. We can use the ideas of time and
evolution and darwinism and social change and all that. And again, there are
lots of great ideas that really hold it all together, but ultimately these
are just fancy explanations for a far more intimate and basic experience.
Remember Pirsig's complaint that its absurd to believe that consciousness
could be a property of dead matter, that it is an epiphenomenon of material
reality? Its tied in with this same notion, I think. I think its perfectly
all right to believe in bodies, especially at dinner time, but I think that
the MOQ asserts that experience is the reality. Some of the best
explanations will tell us that some kind of reality comes first, but
ultimately it begins with experience and not bodies.
Or think of the idea of subatomic particles having preferences. Surely it
would be wrong to call that a sensory experience. Try to imagine an eyeball
smaller than light itself and you'll see the problem. Even a single celled
organism would be a highly sensuous creature by comparison. Downright sexy.
Ian said:
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.
dmb says:
It sounds trite, but I think the whole thing is alive and aware. The thing
about the MOQ is that it doesn't really have any things. I mean, we can make
the static/Dynamic distinction without reference to substances or bodies at
all. We can say that it distinguishes between kinds of experience. And then
with four static levels too. We can categorize experience that way without
making any claims at all about pre-existing things as such. i wouldn't know
how to spell it out, but I think its not just that experience is all we get
and dare not go further with any certainty. Although that seems true too.
But I think its more like experience is all there is and its not a matter of
falling short at all. We verify experience with more experience, not actual
physics or whatever. That's what undid the church.
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.
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."
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