[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Scott.

On 16 Jan. you wrote:

> 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?

I did not have much hope of meeting your demands, but I still see 
my answer as relevant. If what "precipitates" is value the source 
must necessarily be value too.           

> 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? 

I assume it from the Experience=Value postulate! As the static 
levels are value levels, they may as well be called "experience 
levels". About the "nervous systems" see lower down.   

> That is, you are simply begging the question here. Why should
> the first static latch be seen as a VALUE latch? 

Is it now the first value latch you question? Your original puzzle 
was why the source of the first latch had to be value. Make up 
your mind.   

> Why can't it just be
> a happenstance -- nothing to do with what we know of as value or
> experience? 

You switch from experience=value to experience=consciousness, 
but we go on living even if unconscious. Biological value-
experience isn't self-aware, i's so to say detrimental to it. Ever 
heard of the millipede who was asked how it kept order of its 
legs? Afterwards it could not move;-)    

> Put another way, why should one say there is value or
> experience involved ....

Again, your "experience" clearly indicates "consciousness". If you 
remember I once forwarded a theory how it (consciousness) 
emerged and developed to the fantastic "inner world" of humans, 
and here the nervous system plays a role. Biological complexity 
(the various nerve layers or "brains"; the limbic, the olfactory 
...etc up to the neocortex, all gave an opportunity to store 
experience (memory) and re-run it to various degrees, in dreams 
for animals, as "thoughts" with humans. 

This is not "mind from brain" as you once deemed it because 
there is no mind/matter divide in the MOQ, this theory merely say 
that biological complexity enabled the social level to latch on top 
of it. And now in society's service it (bio. complexity) likewise 
enabled the intellectual level to latch on top of society. However, 
this complexity (intelligence) is not intellect, I harp on this 
because here is the wrong turn almost all take; Intelligence and 
intellectual value are thoroughly mixed, while intellectual value is 
inner/outer distinction and the many variants and problems 
thereof, who you, Scott, are an expert of multiplying.            

> ....when an atom absorbs a photon, or when a planet
> orbits a star?

Above I spoke of biological complexity, but there is biological 
simplicity - organisms without nerves that nevertheless do their 
things. At the inorganic level the "simplicity" is total, but 
"knowledge" of inorganic value is infallible. However, I don't see it 
as useful to develop any Q-Physics or Q-sciences at all. The 
intellectual level is science itself and its model of forces guiding 
the physical universe works perfectly. MOQ's only mission is 
metaphysical.     

Bo

l