From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sun Mar 07 2004 - 13:43:14 GMT
Hi All
In a way we should stick to doing what Pirsig suggests
and stick to talking about patterns and not ideas/forms/substance.
He also suggests we use the DQ term and relate it to SQ patterns
in an evolutionary framework. The whole thing goes back to the
Greeks and the question of whether the cosmos is entirely a matter
of flux or is there some order we can identify? Plato suggested the forms
as an explanation for whatevr ordet there is. These forms were static and
eternal and transcendental. This made sense when trying to understand the
static and repeating nature of something like horse-ness. Aristotle
questioned
whether there was any evidence for these transcendental forms. Instead he
suggested
that there may be innate natures within things, underlying substance that
produced
these regularities. In the light of evolution I do not think anyone suggests
that there
is a static eternal form/idea of horse-ness. Clearly there is the potential
for constant
change. For life we look towards underlying/innate DNA to explain regularity
and
change. But what about the form of electrons or water? Can these/have these
evolved?
How is regularity and pattern brought about for these entitities? The levels
Pirsig suggests
are the stabilising of patterns between higher level entities. Particles
organise into atoms,
atoms into molecules, molecules into life, life into species, species into
individuals, individuals
into society and culture. Now hydrogen and oxygen are one sort of level of
organisation
seperately, when they are organised together they are another sort of level
e.g. water, such
that within water oxygen and hydrogen behave very differently as an
individual does within a
society and a culture. Patterns are emergent levels of organisation. But
what organises and how is this
organisation stablised and repeated? Why are electrons the same everywhere
at at all times.
Physics uses the conceot of fields. Something spread out in time and space
with the capacity to manifest
certain types of manifestation. The notion of forms/ideas are rather close
concepts to the scientific ones
of laws and forms. Pirsig chalenges the materialistic causality implied by
science's concepts by
suggesting the DQ/SQ concepts instead. Clearly the question as to the nature
of SQ pattern/regularity
remains unanswered. Pirsig holds back from chosing between Plato or
Aristotle or modern sciences
conception of this regularity. Post-modernism tells us that the regularity
we find is that which we conceptually
create. This is true, we play an active role in world-conceptual-creation.
The amazing thing is that this is possible,
that there is any regularity at all in the cosmos. There is, but it has no
foundation in substance. For me
regularity has to be seen as a form of activity (DQ), the cosmos commits
intself to one
direction or another, a value based activity, how it is able to place a peg
in the sand and say from now on
protons shall have this fixed mass is probably the most outstanding question
in human knowledge.
Ask yourselves how what you are today carries into tomorrow. Are your
feelings and sensibility recorded
in brain cells? Do you beleive that? How does anything endure? What is the
real nature of memory?
Is not the very nature of time: future/present/past the existence of
potential/event/unchangeable in this cosmos.
The only fixity in this cosmos is the fixity of having passed by? So that
regularity=the presence of the past in the present.
Yet openness and indeterminacy remains, the future equals a bubbling brew of
possibility out of which we have the
agency to drive in one direction or another. We stand on the firm ground of
the static past and drive into
the future in our chosen diretion. The real challenge of human existence is:
are we going the right way forward?
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Destination Quality" <planetquality@hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 10:30 AM
Subject: RE: MD When is a society a good society?
> Hi Paul,
>
> >From: "Paul Turner" <paulj.turner@ntlworld.com>
> >Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
> >To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
> >Subject: RE: MD When is a society a good society?
> >Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 21:56:50 -0000
> >
> >Chris
> >
> >Chris said:
> >pssst, i will let you in on a secret - there are no levels just as there
> >are no Kantian categories.
>
> >Paul:
> >I don't understand your comparison. Has Pirsig, or anyone else, ever
> >said that the static levels are innate a priori concepts?
>
> Chris:
>
> I never said innate, I just said apriori. Makes me wonder if you
understand
> me when I say Kantian categories, are you familiar with Kant?. It does not
> matter whether Pirsig said it or not, this may sound haughty but I just
look
> at at the two words: STATIC LEVELS. Nothing or 'nothink' is static. What
do
> you do when you say that something is static? You fixate it, that is what
> all metaphysicians do, fixating. Do you really think when somebody says
> 'contingent (static) levels' that that makes any sense at all? Further if
> the levels would not be apriori the there should be ways to check that by
> empirical means; how do we do that? Have you ever noticed the aporetic
> character of the discussions when it comes to discerning what (events,
> 'things', developments etc..) belongs to which level? Ever wondered why?
And
> where are these levels to be found, where does this 'perspective' come
from?
> There is only one 'level': the biological.
>
> >Chris said:
> >A priori levels are platonic forms
> >
> >Paul:
> >Again, "a priori levels," from where did you get this idea?
>
> Chris: See above
>
> >Chris said:
> >Pirsig indeed is a platonist, a neoplatonist actually. Does the name
> >Plotinus ring a bell?
> >
> >Paul:
> >Yes, I think Pirsig has said that Plotinus is the closest system to his
> >MOQ. I think it is a mistake to jump from a similarity with Plotinus to
> >an equation with Plato though. It is this kind of over-eager
> >categorisation that destroys originality and hinders understanding.
>
>
> Chris: Ok that was not entirely fair; but tho whome it wasn't? I reasoned
> from the usual understanding of Plato, not from Plato more sec., hence the
> Greek word 'Idea'. I drop the charges and will stick to transcendental
> forms, or neoplatonic forms, my apologies.
>
> Chris
>
> PS Matt: Your post is in need of a more extensive reply and I did not
> understand the last part but my answer will be there in a day.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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