From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Dec 01 2005 - 21:24:13 GMT
> [Arlo previously]
> Tell me Platt, where was the Intellectual level 4 billion years ago?
> Sitting around waiting for the inorganic to "flower", then the biological,
> then the social, so that it could finally apply to something?
>
> [Platt]
> You got it.
>
> [Arlo]
> Well, go figure. Was "calculus" sitting there too? Or just the general MOQ
> levels?
Everything was there waiting to come into being from responses to DQ.
> [Arlo previously]
> This reply makes no sense. You said, in an anti-emergence criticism, that
> your disagreement was that you believed "it was all there from the
> beginning". What "it" was all there?
> [Platt]
> Experience, i.e. Quality.
>
> [Arlo]
> Was my "experience" of writing this email "there from the beginning"?
No.
> [Platt]
> Experience = Dynamic Quality. Your experience is DQ and yes it was there
> there from the beginning, as was the DQ for Mr. Harley or whoever assembled
> the first Harley motorcycle.
>
> [Arlo]
> Tell me, if it was all there from the beginning, why did it bother to
> create inorganic, and then biological, and then social, and then
> intellectual levels?
That's what it took to become what we know today. Why? I don't know. Why
do chickens need eggs to be? You tell me.
> [Arlo previously]
> As I've been saying from day one, the MOQ shows that the emergence of
> "higher order organisms" (next level up) derives from collective activity
> on the previous level. Then, what we consider "individuals" on that newly
> emerged level, in collective activity, give rise to an even "higher order
> organism". This is explained very clearly in Lila.
Yes, but why?
> [Platt]
> Nonsense. Pirsig explained that in the MOQ all "organisms" exist only in
> the material world, all societies (and ideas) exist only in the mental
> world.
>
> [Arlo]
> Pirsig himself uses the word "organism" to describe emergent social
> patterns. "Yet the social pattern of the city devours their lives for its
> own purposes just as surely as farmers devour the flesh of farm animals. A
> higher organism is feeding upon a lower one and accomplishing more by doing
> so than the lower organism can accomplish alone."
>
> He says the relationship between the emergent intellctual level and the
> lower social level is analogous to the social-biological relationship. I
> agree with Pirsig, it makes sense to think of these newly emerged patterns
> as organisms.
Show me where he says intellectual patterns are organisms.
> [Arlo]
> But the socially constructed software that is "Platt" is at a higher level
> than the cell collective that underlies it.
>
> [Platt]
> And you continue to blow up that lead balloon.
>
> [Arlo]
> As Pirsig says, "The language of mental intelligence has nothing to say to
> the cells directly. They don't understand it. The language of the cells has
> nothing to say to the mind directly. It doesn't speak that language either.
> They are completely separate patterns. At this moment, asleep, "Lila"
> doesn't exist any more than a program exists when a computer is switched
> off. The intelligence of her cells had switched Lila off for the night,
> exactly the way a hardware switch turns off a computer program. The
> language we've inherited confuses this. We say "my" body and "your" body
> and "his" body and "her" body, but it isn't that way. That's like a FORTRAN
> program saying, "this is my computer." "1 his body on the left," and "This
> body on the right." That's the way to say it. This Cartesian "Me," this
> autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out
> through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just
> completely ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of reality is just
> an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. This
> Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This body on
> the left and this body on the right are running variations of the same
> program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to either of them. The "Me's"
> are simply a program format."
>
> Tell me, from where does the software program that is "Platt" originate?
> Was it hanging around since the beginning waiting to "flower" too?
Yes, as Quality, experience, awareness, consciousness -- the source of all
things.
> [Arlo]
> Just as the MOQ, or calculus, or gravity is at a higher level on the MOQ
> than "Platt".
>
> [Platt]
> Nonsense. Nothing is higher than the experience of you, me, and the man
> over there behind the tree. Quality has us all, everyone -- past, present
> and future..
>
> [Arlo]
> Ah, yes, the Randian nonsense. Quality, indeed, has us all, and we play a
> part in the ongoing evolution of "life", but here you go again with the
> opining red-blood cell speech. Pirsig rightly places your exalted
> "individual" on the social level, saying, "The strongest moral argument
> against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's Dynamic
> capability-its capability for change and evolution."
You conveniently left out, "A tribe can change its values only person by
person and someone has to be first." I don't know why keep avoiding that.
Seems clear enough to me. On second thought, I do know why.
> There is a lot said in that. Namely that "individuals" constitute the
> red-blood cells (or perhaps more apt, the DNA) for the organism that is
> society. Killing individuals weakens society the same way killing DNA
> weakens the biological level.
Not the same at all. "And beyond that is an even more compelling reason
(not to kill an individual): societies and thoughts and principles
themselves are no more than sets of static patterns. These patterns can't
by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality. Only a living being
can do that." (Lila, 13, parens added)
Platt
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