From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jul 17 2005 - 21:42:53 BST
Scott,
I've modified and resent a previous version of this post.
You said to Arlo:
>And how did the ability to respond emerge? How is any pattern observed?
>It looks to me like you are using Quality to wave away all the hard
problems.
>I
>think Pirsig does the same, which is why I see the MOQ as materialism
>plus DQ as a deus ex machina.
Paul: Every so often you make this statement in one form or another.
First of all, materialism is a system which says that everything can be
reduced to the behaviour of matter. In the MOQ, matter is explained as the
behaviour of one level of inorganic value patterns. Although events at the
biological, social or intellectual levels can, in principle, be described in
terms of events at the inorganic level this does not mean that that is "all
they are." So I don't see how you can say that the MOQ is materialism and
keep a straight face.
In the MOQ, space and time are high quality intellectual patterns postulated
to exist at the inorganic level in order to successfully predict and
calculate the behaviour of inorganic patterns but it is proposed that the
value that produces and maintains both inorganic and intellectual patterns
is not dependent on the prior existence of a spatio-temporal universe. So
your problem of how something essentially and necessarily spatio-temporal
can be aware of space and time doesn't come up, as I see it.
Secondly, with respect to DQ being a deus ex machina, if you recall from ZMM
it was DQ that Pirsig first set about trying to come to grips with. The
idea of the static patterns and evolutionary levels came later and so DQ was
not lowered onto the intellectual stage to wave away anything that Pirsig
found hard to explain in terms of static patterns.
As we can see in LILA, it turned out that a concept of DQ could help shed
light on evolutionary growth, human cultural development, insanity, truth,
religion, morality etc. I would say that DQ, far from waving them away,
provides answers (or a new paradigm for answers) to a lot of hard questions.
Finally, with respect to the waving away of hard questions, the path you
have taken is to assume that semiotic consciousness is fundamental to the
universe, has always been here but is too mysterious to explain. What can
we say to that? Bummer?
Regards
Paul
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jul 17 2005 - 21:58:04 BST