From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat May 01 2004 - 22:15:15 BST
Platt asked:
The question is do the patterns exist independently of perception?
Steve answered:
No. I think the word pattern presupposes perception.
dmb says:
Patterns do NOT exist independently of perception!? Oh. Now I see where
you've has gone wrong, Steve. You're suffering from a misconception that has
far reaching implications. There's more to the problem than this single
mistake, but I think it might be useful to focus on it exclusively. I think
you've taken a pretty radical turn away from Pirsig's MOQ in making that
assertion.
I think we can get at the issue most directly and explicitly by looking at
chapter 8 of Lila...
"It may sound a little awkward, (to change from SOM's "A causes B" to the
MOQ's "B values precondition A") but that's a matter of linguistic custom,
not science. The language used to describe the data is changed but the
scientific data itself is unchanged. The same is true for every other
scientific observation Phaedrus could think of. You can always substitute "B
values precondition A" for "A causes B" without changing any facts of
science at all. The term "cause" can be struck out completely from a
scientific description of the universe without any loss of accuracy or
completeness." Lila, page 104
Please notice that the facts and data do not change as we make the switch
from SOM's "causation" to the MOQ's "preference". These two alternatives are
both intellectual descriptions of those same facts and data. In other words,
SOM and MOQ are both working with the same observations and only the
intellectual descriptions them has changed. The data are independent of
these descriptions. In other words, the inorganic patterns that produce the
data is independent of any descriptions of it. So the switch from SOM to the
MOQ does NOT imply that these facts and data are unreal or in any way
reduced to human perception. The dials move all the same. Inorganic patterns
such as water, glass, rocks are no longer described in terms of substance,
but they can still be photographed, weighed, measured, or otherwise
subjected to scientific scrutiny. Glasses of water can still quench our
thirst and rocks can still be used to kill giants.
What keeps a glass of water together if not substance? Or as Pirsig puts
it,..
"If you pick up a glass of water why don't the properties of that glass go
flying off in different directions? What is it that keeps these properties
uniform if it is not something called substance? That is the question that
created the concept of substance in the first place. The answer provided by
the MOQ is similar to that given to the "causation" platypus. Strike out the
word "substance" wherever it appears and substitute the expression "stable
inorganic patterns of value". Again, the difference is linguistic. It
doesn't make a whit of difference in the laboratory which term is used. No
dials change their readings. The observed laboratory data are exactly the
same. ...Phaedrus saw that the "value" which directed subatomic particles is
not identical with the "value" a human being gives to a painting. But he saw
that the two are cousins, and that the exact relationship between them can
be defined with great precision." Lila, page 105
I think you can see here that something like a glass of water has an
independent existence of its own. Something holds it together. There is also
something that holds together the intellectual descriptions we assign to it
and they are both held together by patterns of quality, but they are held
together by quality of distinctly different kinds. In this way, objects and
subjects remain within the MOQ, but they are redescribed in such a way that
gives a greatly enhanced ontological status to the subjective side of
things. The MOQ does not reduce all objects to subjects, it does not deny
that objects exist in and of themselves, it only says that subjects and
objects are better concieved as differing species of value.
I think the idea that inorganic level patterns have preferences implies that
some kind of consciousness goes all the way down. Its hard to imagine what
sort of limited awareness there must be for something like an atom or a
star, but that is the implication. In that sense, we might say that no
patterns are independent of perception. In that sense, the word perception
would refer not to our intellectual descriptions, but to the perception by
the inorganic patterns themselves. In this way we can think of inorganic
patterns as the lowest level of consciousness, far below the deepest
subconscious processes of human beings. But that is just a side note,
really. The point is simply that inorganic patterns of quality prefer to do
what they do independently of our intellectual descriptions of those
preferences.
Thanks,
dmb
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