From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 13:47:40 GMT
Hi DMB:
> dmb says:
> Numbers work better at the inorganic level simply because it is the least
> dynamic and therefore displays "a very consistent pattern of preferences".
> The answer to the reverse question would be about the same. Why are values
> at the third and fourth levels so difficult to quantify? Because they are
> more dynamic and therefore exhibit a much less "consistent pattern of
> preferences".
Good answer. I just wonder if the theories of chaos might move numerical
measurements up a level, or at least make a beachhead.
> dmb says:
> Add the role of DQ and a sense of value to logical consistency, agreement
> with experience, economy of explanation, all the other rules of symbolic
> manipulation and a bunch of things I haven't thought of, and we begin to
> see how the MOQ might like to measure values at the intellectual level.
Yes. Let's not forget "beauty" and those other "things" we haven't thought
of. As I wrote to David M., it might be interesting to develop a list of
MOQ criteria for intellectual and artistic values.
> dmb says:
> The MOQ doesn't deny subjectivity, it merely embedds it in a larger system.
> Its not a problem to think of intellectual values as "subjective" in this
> larger system because the MOQ says all static patterns of every level are
> subjective, where both scientists and particles have preferences. In this
> way, subjectivity is transformed from a narrow ego-consciousness as a
> by-product of biological functions (SOM) into the central fact of all
> existence (MOQ).
>
> In LILA Pirsig wrote:
> "Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not
> absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an
> absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences. Therefore
> when you strike "cause" from the language and substitute "value" you are
> not only replacing an empirically meaningless term with a meaningful one;
> you are using a term that is more appropriate to actual observation."
>
> In LILA Pirsig wrote:
> "The MOQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject
> and object, mind and matter, by embedding them all in a larger system of
> understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
> social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that
> go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
> contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary
> relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one."
A bit of contradiction here. "All static patterns of every level are
subjective" vs. "Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
social and intellectual values." Maybe a matter of time: all levels were
subjective at their creation, becoming objective over time.
> dmb says:
> I'd like t think that the value of art can't be measured the same way we
> measure the value of commodities such as food and clothing, by the
> manufacturer's suggested retail price. Here I think Pirsig is saying that
> classical reason is unable grasp such things except in terms of what
> they'll fetch at the auction house. This commodification of the world is
> part and parcel of the "emotionally hollow and spiritually empty" SOM
> intellect and has much to do with that 20th century lonliness, that feeling
> of having to drink life throug a straw.
>
> In ZAMM Pirsig wrote:
> "Analytic reason, dialectic reason. Reason which at the University is
> sometimes considered to be the whole of understanding. You've never had to
> understand it really. It's always been completely bankrupt with regard to
> abstract art. Nonrepresentative art is one of the root experiences I'm
> talking about. Some people still condemn it because it doesn't make
> 'sense.' But what's really wrong is not the art but the 'sense,' the
> classical reason, which can't grasp it."
Excellent comments about art, both from you and Pirsig. I guess it really
does boil down to "I know what I like." Hopefully, what one "likes" has
some experiential depth.
> dmb concludes:
> People have different perceptions of quality due to each one's unique blend
> of culture and biography. For someone like Lila, I imagine the whole world
> of ideas was pretty foggy. I'd guess she would be lost in those waters.
> Rigel probably has no problem understanding the world in conventional,
> rational terms, but unlike the author, he lacks the imagination or will to
> grasp its inadequacies or see beyond it. And so it is with those of us who
> are not fictional.
Yes, what I meant by "experiential depth," better expressed.
Thanks,
Platt
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