[MD] Windmills and Intellectual Pots

[Paul Turner]

Mike,

I'm unsubscribing but here is a reply anyway.

>By saying that matter is "redescribed" as inorganic patterns of value,
>without emphasising the significance of the redescription, i.e. the
>change of meaning, you risk losing that significance, which is:
>inorganic patterns of value, such as the ones that form our living
>bodies and are investigated by the natural sciences and are apparent
>in sensory experience, are not the same as the objects that our
>intellects deduce (or perhaps more accurately, induce) in order to
>explain sensory experience from a third-person viewpoint. This act of
>deduction (or more accurately, induction) is an act of creating a new
>pattern of value.

Paul:  I would argue that inorganic patterns are also deduced, which is what
Pirsig says in SODV:  "The bottom box shows inorganic patterns.  The
Metaphysics of Quality says objects are composed of "substance" but it says
that this substance can be defined more precisely as "stable inorganic
patterns of value."  This added definition makes substance sound more
ephemeral than previously but it is not.  The objects look and smell and
feel the same either way.  The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with scientific
realism that these inorganic patterns are completely real, and there is no
reason that box shouldn't be there, but it says that this reality is
ultimately a deduction made in the first months of an infant's life and
supported by the culture in which the infant grows up."

>So, the redescription is all well and good, but if we want to defeat
>the materialist completely, we need to make absolutely sure that we
>don't conflate static patterns of value that are postulated
>intellectually (such as, "virus", "photon", "Proxima Centauri" and,
>admittedly, "carbon"), with static patterns of value known empirically
>(such as "fever", "blue", "bright point of light in the sky" and
>"likes to bond with both metals and non-metals"). To conflate them is
>to throw away the insight of Pirsig's revolutionary suggestion that
>subjects and objects are deduced from Quality events, from
>non-intellectual patterns of value.

Paul:  I think you are slipping into a correspondence theory of truth here.
You are saying that some words inherently correspond with reality more than
others, as if they are in some kind of hierarchy of proximity.  This leads
to all kinds of confusion, an example of which is in this thread where you
previously said that carbon was known empirically but have now said that it
is "merely an intellectual postulation."  Once you divide concepts up this
way you have to define the point at which the merely intellectually
postulated concept becomes the empirically given concept.  The history of
philosophy has thus far shown this to be an ill-fated endeavour so I tend to
side with the pragmatists and repudiate the idea of inherent correspondence
and this putative division or hierarchy of concepts with it.

Pirsig's revolutionary suggestion was indeed that the existence of subjects
and objects is deduced from experience of Quality but in the context of LILA
this means that the existence of all static patterns is deduced from this
experience and subjects and objects become contained in the four levels.  I
get accused of overcomplicating things but perhaps I can make a simple
statement with respect to the ZMM insight:
Subjects and objects are the product of experience and not the conditions or
cause of it.  Thus, subjects and objects are still produced by experience
but they are recognised as having a conventional, that is to say, static,
reality and not a primary, fundamental or ultimate reality.  This is the
same insight which the Indian tradition has carried for centuries while the
west has persistently reified one or the other as the starting point of its
metaphysics.

>> Paul:  I gave my definition of matter in the first post in which I made
>this
>> argument.  Here it is again:  Something that has mass and exists as a
>solid,
>> liquid, gas, or plasma.  By this definition, do you still deny that
>carbon
>> is matter?
>
>Remember, the "something" is deduced from the mass and the state (and
>other things), which, I think, are inorganic patterns of value. And
>the "something" (which, by your definition, could be classified
>"matter") is an intellectual pattern of value.

Paul:  Inorganic patterns of value are also deduced from experience and
"matter" is only an intellectual pattern to the extent that "inorganic
patterns of values" is.  I think you are conflating what I have described as
thesis (1) and (2) of the MOQ.  In thesis (1), everything is recognised as a
human invention; a pattern of knowledge.  But in thesis (2), the pattern of
knowledge called the MOQ is laid out as a "plain of understanding" and IN
THIS PATTERN inorganic patterns of values are independent of intellectual
patterns and evolved prior to them.

>To take that further, the mass and the state may themselves be
>intellectual patterns, deduced from Quality events such as (the
>inherent S/O construction of the English language make the description
>of the following rather clumsy) the sensation of weight in one's hand
>(mass) and the sensation of water flowing between one's fingers
>(state).

Paul:  The "sensation of weight in one's hand" and "water flowing between
one's fingers" are also deductions from experience.  But once deduced,
within the structure of the MOQ they can be assigned to a level of values
and declared to be independent of intellectual patterns.

>I realise that this may be taking things a bit further than Pirsig
>did, but I think it's necessary, if we want to be serious about the
>concept of a hierarchy of static _patterns of value_ , as opposed to
>hierarchy of substances. If the MOQ is to describe an evolution of
>value instead of an evolution of matter, we need to distinguish
>between the four levels based on the type of Quality event.

Paul:  Right, and all events currently described as "matter" fit into the
inorganic level so why say matter is only intellectual?

 And in
>this post I'm arguing that inorganic patterns of value are chemical
>interactions (which I think can include 'raw' sense data), as opposed
>to the interacting entities which (as is implied by the word
>"INTERactions") we deduce from them.

Paul:  I don't see why interacting chemicals and interacting entities need
to be considered differently.  Are chemicals not entities?  Chemicals are
also "deduced."

Regards

Paul