From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 15:34:31 BST
Hi Paul,
> You will be pleased to know this will be my final post
> on this matter! I can sense an irritation developing,
No irritation on my part, just frustration at my own inability to
understand your argument.
> I'll have one more go at making my point clear and if
> I fail perhaps I can make the point over time from
> different perspectives. However, here is a response to
> Platt and a summing up of what I'm getting at.
>
> Platt wrote:
>
> '> In the first sentence Lila is a living human being.
> > Pirsig didn't think it
> > was necessary to state the obvious.'
>
> It may be obvious that Lila is a living being, but it
> is not obvious what a living being 'is'.
>
> What do I mean by that? Surely we all know what a
> living being is!! Well, it is obvious that a rock is a
> solid piece of matter until someone comes along and
> tells you that it is actually a stable inorganic
> pattern of Quality.
In my post to you of April 26, I repeated what Pirsig said a living being
"actually is" according to his new metaphysics:
"Lila is a living being composed of static patterns of value with ability to
respond to DQ."
So just as Pirsig has defined a rock by MOQ lights, so has he defined a
living being. (Note that he refers to Lila, a human being.)
In Chapter 11 of Lila, Pirsig explains in some detail how living beings
were created in an evolutionary process driven by the force of DQ
towards betterness. Why "betterness?" Because that presumption
explains the whole process a lot better than the usual explanation of
chance and necessity, i.e., the theory of "Oops."
> However, the one I am really interested in is 'what is
> it that perceives and adjusts to Dynamic Quality?'
> (because it is the 'perceiving and adjusting to DQ'
> that is central to the theory of evolution upon which
> the levels and framework of morality is based) to
> which the only answer I can find is 'a living being'.
Asking "what is it that perceives . . ." suggests you're looking for a
physical "mechanism" (like science does) to explain the phenomenon of
responding to DQ. But, Pirsig suggests otherwise:
"This would explain why patterns of life do not change solely in accord
with causative 'mechanisms' or 'programs' or blind operations of
physical laws. They do not just change valuelessly. They change in
ways that evade, override and circumvent these laws. The patterns of life
are constantly evolving in response to something 'better' than that which
these laws have to offer." (11)
The answer then to "What is it that responds? is "patterns of life" and
"What do they respond to?"-- "something better." How the patterns of
life arose is explained in some detail in Chap. 11.
> So I am asking, what is the MoQ definition of a living
> being?
>
> Here are the responses I've had:
>
>
> Wim - 'Living Beings' are no different from 'inanimate
> things': they are just a way of looking at and naming
> evolving static patterns of value.
To say "living beings are no different from inanimate things" is
misleading to say the least.
> DMB - Think of the cohesion as a forest. Elsewhere in
> the book, Pirsig describes persons as forests of
> static patterns, meaning a collection of various
> static patterns from various levels. That is the MOQ's
> definition of people. When the cohesion that holds a
> living being together is broken, that is death.
Cohesion, collection, combination--all accurate words to describe the
pattern of a living being as including more than one level.
> Bo - What Pirsig means by "living -" is "human being",
> who is member of sufficiently advanced societies to
> support intellect..Intellect is now the upper level
> where the outermost pattern (the Quality idea)
> perceives DQ...in my opinion.'
Yes. In the context where the term "living being" appears in Lila, Pirsig
is talking about why the death penalty (for humans) is a bad idea. I
agree with Bo that at this point in evolution, only humans can respond
to DQ. Other life and inorganic forms became too static to respond eons
ago. Viruses mutate. That's their static nature.
> I interpret Platt’s definition of a living being as
> ‘Human Beings, who are a combination of all static
> patterns of Quality and can perceive or adjust to
> Dynamic Quality’
>
> So the dialogue goes something like this:
>
> Paul: What can perceive or adjust to DQ?
> Platt: Only human beings
> Paul: What is a ‘human being’?
> Platt: A combination of SPOQ
> Paul: But SPOQ can’t perceive or adjust to DQ by
> themselves
> Platt: They can when they collectively ‘form’ a human
> being
Yes. See Bo's further explanation above.
> I think that Bo sees that ‘that which can perceive or
> adjust to DQ’ is the uppermost level in the hierarchy.
> Therefore only the intellectual level can perceive or
> adjust to DQ, only human beings participate in the
> intellectual level, so only human beings can perceive
> or adjust to DQ. This has not always been the case,
> the uppermost level changes. The definition of a
> living being, then, changes with evolution.
Yes.
> So, I can pull them all together into a definition
> something like this:
>
> ‘In the MoQ, a living being is the attempt to
> integrate the ‘subject’ from SOM into the MoQ as the
> cohesion of static patterns of Quality from all
> current levels that perceives and adjusts to Dynamic
> Quality through static patterns of the uppermost
> level, currently Intellectual Quality’
A bit awkward IMO, but that's the general idea.
> Snappy :) Still sounds ‘wrong’, only human beings are
> alive? And what’s so special about a ‘cohesion’?
Only human beings are alive is a wrong conclusion if you accept my
interpretation based on context that Pirsig meant, "Only human beings
can respond . . ." Just substitute "human" for "living" in your summary
description above. Further, there's nothing special about cohesion. It's
just one of several possible words pointing to the fact that human beings
consist of more than one level.
> My own responses to the question are that (along the
> same lines as Wim) perhaps there is no metaphysical
> need to include the concept of a 'living being' in the
> MoQ. In which case, it is the statement that 'only
> living beings can perceive or adjust to Dynamic
> Quality' that doesn't need to be included. (As Wim
> points out, the tendency to take concepts and objects
> derived from SOM and fudge them into a MoQ is a
> simplified, perhaps transitionary form of the MoQ)
> From this solution it follows that all SPOQ can
> perceive or adjust to DQ by themselves.
I disagree that all SPOQ can respond to DQ by themselves. That goes
directly against what Pirsig asserts.
> Another response is that, if the 'living being'
> statement has to stay then a 'living being' is the
> combination of both static and Dynamic Quality,
> patterned and unpatterned value.
>
> Pirsig: 'The static molecule, an enormous, chemically
> 'dead' plasticlike molecule called protein, surrounds
> the Dynamic one and prevents attack by forces of
> light, heat and other chemicals that would prey on its
> sensitivity and destroy it. The Dynamic one, called
> DNA, reciprocates by telling the static one what to
> do, replacing the static one when it wears out,
> replacing itself, and changing its own nature to
> overcome adverse conditions. These two kinds of
> molecules, working together, are all there is in some
> viruses which are the simplest forms of life' Ch 11
>
> Pirsig: ‘Biologically she’s fine, socially she’s
> pretty far down the scale, intellectually she’s
> nowhere. But Dynamically…Ah! That’s the one to watch.
> There’s something ferociously Dynamic going on with
> her’ Ch 13
>
> I have speculated that the dynamic part of all nature
> is a ‘dynamic intelligence’ (not to be confused with
> the intelligence measured by IQ tests of course or
> with intellectual quality).
Sounds good to me. Only I call it "dynamic consciousness." Same
difference.
> Another response is to say that neither static
> patterns nor 'living beings' can perceive or adjust to
> DQ. DQ simply adjusts static patterns with the most
> potential for change, the weakest patterns, which is
> experienced as a perception of DQ. Maybe weak patterns
> held together by ambiguous preferences are what we may
> choose to call alive.
Maybe. But again, contrary to the author.
> Pirsig: 'mechanisms in which a number of options are
> so evenly balanced that a weak Dynamic force can tip
> the balance one way or another' Ch 11
>
> From the last solution, it does not follow that 'human
> beings' are the only SPOQ that can be adjusted by DQ.
> The Intellectual level may contain the weakest
> patterns but new 'lifeforms' may be evolving from weak
> patterns at the inorganic level at the bottom of the
> ocean, new viruses may be evolving from weak
> biological patterns in Hong Kong?
I don't think so. See comment about viruses above.
> Anyway, I don't know which explanation fits best for
> me right now. I do know that there are some of you
> that can't see why I can’t understand what is so
> obvious to you. That's okay, it’s not the first time -
> and as promised, I'll drop the subject now.
I join with others in not wanting to drop the subject. You've put your
finger on a very interesting aspect of the MOQ that as far as I know
hasn't really being thoroughly aired before.
Platt
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