[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Mary]

Hi Krimel,

> Pierce talks about three kind of signs: icons where the sign has a
> direct
> correspondence to the thing it signifies like cave paints or
> photographs;
> indexes where the sign signifies the coming or presence of the thing
> signified, smoke is an index for fire or clouds for rain; and finally
> symbols where the sign stands in an arbitrary relation to the thing
> signified like "cat" signifies a furry purring creature.
> 
> Ideas or intellectual patterns are expressed through these sign
> relationships. A "level" is a collection or set of all similar
> patterns,
> inorganic patterns, biological patterns and so forth. Thus the
> intellectual
> level is the collection of all ideas.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
No wonder you find no value in Pirsig.  

thinking = haveNextThought();
While (thinking == true) {
    qLevel = Intellectual;
    system.out.println ("qLevel = " + qLevel);
    thinking = haveNextThought();
    }
// TODO - can somebody on 2nd shift fix this?  keeps getting stuck here.

You're in an endless loop.  I was just thinking about getting an ice cream
or going to church or filing my tax return.  I must be stuck in the
Intellectual Level since I'm thinking.  

It doesn't matter that you are thinking.  It matters what you are thinking
about.

> I have read Pirsig many times and each time seems to bring new
> disappointments. He does not pretend to be infallible and even speaks
> of the
> MoQ as an entity separate from himself as in "the MoQ states, asserts,
> claims etc." Your idol Bo has been most vocal in calling Pirsig out for
> the
> errors he sees. What makes you all of a sudden an MoQ fundamentalist
> ("If you're gonna talk Pirsig, you gotta get the rules of the game
> right.")
> when you advocate for a position Pirsig explicitly rejects?
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Bo is a rockstar!  (I've always had a thing for older men)

When you're playing chess and you lose, for instance, do you argue with your
opponent about how rooks can be moved or do you think about better openings?

> About the only thing I agree with Bo about is Pirsig's fallibility. If
> a
> level is a collection of all of a particular type of pattern why should
> the
> intellectual "level" be special? With regard to what belongs on the
> level or
> what should count as an idea or intellectual pattern there might be
> some
> dispute; although Pirsig claims it is supposed to be obvious. Nothing
> can
> count as a pattern unless it replicates or iterates or is somehow
> inherently
> static.
>
[Mary Replies] 
Who said the Intellectual Level was special?  All are just static patterns
of value and all of them have to follow the same rules.  It's at the top of
the hierarchy, but try going a day without the Inorganic.
 
> Ideas must be expressible or replicable since they are the most readily
> changeable of the patterns Pirsig talks about. Humans use symbols to do
> this. Pierce and Saussure both talk about how we do this in terms of
> the
> sign relationship. Another way to think about it, which as a programmer
> ought to be clear to you, is in terms of encoding and decoding.
> Experience
> is encoded and stored first as electro-chemical nerve impulses. In
> order to
> share them, they are encoded as sounds, gestures, bodily postures,
> facial
> expressions or physical markings which can be decoded by others and
> passed
> along.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Sure. And if you're going to explain coding to me you should be seeing that
I could take a circuit tester or something to your laptop but would have a
rough time finding your post in it.  It could be done, as hackers know, but
it sure is a lot harder than opening Outlook.  And what if you encrypted it?
Without decrypting I'd probably never get it right at all.  Levels of
abstraction are everything.


> The intellectual level is hard to deal with because all of the patterns
> on
> the other levels can be encoded expressed and decoded to into it. So
> while a
> materialist might claim that all of the other levels are offshoots from
> inorganic patterns; an idealist can claim that the intellectual level
> contains all of the lower levels expressed as signs and qualia.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
When roses start coming out of your mouth just because you are talking about
them, or your laptop can shit me a new car, then we can talk - in fact I'd
love to because I'd like to have some roses and a new car.  Thank you! 

Best,
Mary