From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jul 21 2005 - 09:11:42 BST
Scott,
>Paul said:
>I'm making the simple statement that e.g. the intellectual solution
>to a math problem written out on a blackboard is not to be found by
>studying
>the properties of the inorganic chalk marks even though the activity can be
>described in those terms. It can also be described in terms of the
>biological movements involved in writing, or the socially agreed
>conventional meanings of the symbols being drawn.
>
>Scott:
>Ok. I was thrown -- and in a sense still am a bit -- by your insertion of
>"in principle". This is a phrase used by a strict materialist to say that
>mind is really matter, that it is in principle reducible to material
>processes (though we don't know how). So the question I would ask is: does
>the MOQ say that in any intellectual pattern there is an accompanying
>inorganic description?
Paul: I think it does say that there is an accompanying description but
that isn't the same as saying that "mind is really matter." I take this
from three places:
1) In LILA, Pirsig says of relationship between the levels that a novel
cannot exist in a computer without the parallel pattern of voltages that
support it but that does not make the novel an expression or property of the
inorganic voltages. This analogy, applied to the intellect and inorganic
levels implies that intellectual patterns cannot exist without parallel
social, biological and inorganic patterns supporting it but this does not
mean that mind is really matter.
2) Again in LILA, Pirsig says of the mind-matter puzzle
"In a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality the four sets of static patterns
are not isolated into separate compartments of mind and matter. Matter is
just a name for certain inorganic value patterns. Biological patterns,
social patterns, and intellectual patterns are supported by this pattern of
matter but are independent of it. They have rules and laws of their own
that are not derivable from the rules or laws of substance...Biological and
social and intellectual patterns are not the possession of substance. The
laws that create and destroy these patterns are not the laws of electrons
and protons and other elementary particles. The forces that create and
destroy these patterns are the forces of value. So what the Metaphysics of
Quality concludes is that all schools are right on the mind-matter question.
Mind is contained in static inorganic patterns. Matter is contained in
static intellectual patterns. Both mind and matter are completely separate
evolutionary levels of static patterns of value, and as such are capable of
each containing the other without contradiction."
I think when he says "mind is contained in static inorganic patterns" he
means that one can describe intellectual events in terms of the inorganic
patterns that support all of the levels. When he says "matter is contained
in static intellectual patterns" I think he means that matter is a high
quality intellectual pattern for describing and dealing with the behaviour
of inorganic patterns. The important thing is, neither is reduced to being
nothing but the other, a la materialism (Ian's protestations
notwithstanding) or idealism.
3) In the letter to me about intellect, he said
"Just as every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all inorganic
patterns are biological; and just as every social [pattern] is also
biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every
intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are
intellectual."
From which you can conclude that all intellectual patterns are also
inorganic, in the sense described above.
>I would also say that space and time are intellectual patterns, but since
>they shape perception, this probably does not mean the same thing that you
>mean to say. For example, I would say there was space and time before 1000
>B.C, i.e., before the intellect manifested itself in human thought.
Paul: I would think the MOQ would say that there were inorganic, biological
and social patterns before intellect and they were doing just fine without
the intellectual patterns of space and time.
>Scott:
>The god Kronos existed before there were MOQian intellectual patterns,
>though. And the gods were thought to live in a place, so there was space.
Paul: Well, I guess this means that space and time emerged as social
patterns. Although I recall this from Barfield (I got this from
http://eyelight.webservepro.com/Z/linelinks.html but it doesn't say where
it's from):
"If, with the help of some time-machine working in reverse, a man of the
Middle Ages could be suddenly transported into the skin of a man of the
twentieth century, seeing through our eyes and with our 'figuration' the
objects we see, I think he would feel like a child who looks for the first
time at a photograph through the ingenious magic of a stereoscope. 'Oh!' he
would say, 'look how they stand out!'
We must not forget that in his time perspective had not yet been discovered,
nor underrate the significance of this.
True, it is no more than a device for pictorially representing depth, and
separateness, in space.
But how comes it that the device had never been discovered before -- or, if
discovered, never adopted?
There were plenty of skilled artists, and they would certainly have hit upon
it soon enough if depth in space had characterized the collective
representations they wished to reproduce, as it characterizes ours.
They did not need it. Before the scientific revolution the world was more
like a garment men wore about them than a stage on which they moved.
In such a world the convention of perspective was unnecessary.
To such a world other conventions of visual reproduction, such as the nimbus
and the halo, were as appropriate as to ours they are not.
It was as if the observers were themselves in the picture.
Compared with us, they felt themselves and the objects around them and the
words that expressed those objects, immersed together in something like a
clear lake of -- what shall we say? -- of 'meaning', if you choose. It seems
the most adequate word."
>Paul said: The spatio-temporal universe is an intellectual construction
>which is
>extremely valuable for predicting and controlling inorganic and biological
>patterns. It is proposed that intellect is dependent on social, biological
>and inorganic patterns of value, not space and time.
>
>Scott:
>While I see no reason to so propose. Nor did Plotinus. I argue that that
>proposition is a remnant of materialist, reductionist thinking. While it is
>true that for there to be human intellect tied to a brain, it is dependent
>on biology. But did biology evolve on its own, and then out of nowhere
>decide to make sense organs and nervous systems, which later happened to be
>useful for thinking, or did thinking learn to manifest itself in physical
>form? I go with the latter. (And I hope the word "learn" serves to
>distinguish this from theistic Intelligent Design.)
Paul: I think the MOQ would say that value evolution (Dynamic advances
followed by static latching) did the whole job.
>Paul said:
>We already have value involved in all stages, why do we need intellect as
>well?
>
>Scott:
>Because intellect is the evaluation of patterns in order to create new
>ones.
Paul: Whereas I think intellect is one manifestation of evaluation and as
such is not the precondition of evaluation. This is probably the crux of
our differences.
>Scott:
>I have always been careful to distinguish "evolution" from
>"Darwinism". And all philosophy is, in the end, arm-waving. Some is of
>higher quality, though, and I consider Darwinism to be of low quality.
>Evolution, of course, is a fact.
Paul: Okay. Apologies for misrepresenting you.
>Paul said: I don't think intellect is implied in the phrase static pattern
>of
>value. Or if it is, it is not the intellect that is referred to by the
>term
>"intellectual level."
>
>Scott:
>If you call it Plotinian Intellect, I'm happy with that. As long as human
>intellect is recognized as Plotinian Intellect writ small. As for being
>implied, my argument is that value implies awareness of value, and if B
>values precondition A, then there is an aware choice being made over not-A.
>A pattern is evaluated and acted on accordingly. That is intellect.
Paul: I think that assuming intellect is involved in all static judgments
is incorrect. Is one's choice of a sexual partner intellectual? The choice
to obey authority is not necessarily intellectual either. I can think of
hundreds of judgments made all of the time which aren't intellectual. Then
there is the Dynamic Quality which is no judgment at all, just the awareness
of new values.
Regards
Paul
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