[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[Scott Roberts]

Bo et al,

> Bo quoted Pirsig:
> >     "The foundations are okay, in fact they are rock-solid, but we
> >     never got to discuss them".

> > They are, but if Baggini would have been much wiser?

> Scott:
> Are they? Granted that value is real, how does one get from that to
> saying that value is the ultimate constituent of everything?

Bo said:
The initial postulate Experience=Value is (as postulates goes)
neither probable nor improbable, but if it leads to a more reliable
explanation of "experience" than the current one it's foundations
are okay". The trouble is that nobody knew of any foundations for
SOM, it's taken as granted.

Scott:
But the postulate "Experience=Value" does not address the question I raise 
below:

> For
> example, if there was once nothing but inorganic patterns, how do we
> know they were inorganic patterns of value? Why couldn't value have
> emerged from a value-less universe?

Bo said:
We know because the MOQ says so. I don't know if you ask the
same (silly) question as David M. (how the Q-evolution could
have proceeded before Pirsig) or it is some even sillier one ;-) but
if the first static latch is seen as a VALUE latch, it must
necessarily have emerged from/in a VALUE universe, that's
plain.

Scott:
First, why do you assume that in the inorganic world there is any 
*experience*? Isn't experience limited to entities with nervous systems? 
That is, you are simply begging the question here. Why should the first 
static latch be seen as a VALUE latch? Why can't it just be a 
happenstance -- nothing to do with what we know of as value or experience? 
Put another way, why should one say there is value or experience involved 
when an atom absorbs a photon, or when a planet orbits a star?

[skipping the rest  --  my intellect-obsession is irrelevant to this 
question, which is: are the foundations of the MOQ rock-solid? So far I 
haven't got an answer.]

- Scott