[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Michael Hamilton]

Matt,

> Matt:
> It is true, Arlo runs dangerously close to representationalism here, but I
> think Arlo understands the dangers, and has no truck with them, and is
> getting at something else here.  The difficulty pragmatists have had in
> purging representationalism is in getting rid of the appearance/reality
> distinction (which creates an invidious subjective/objective distinction)
> against the Realists without thereby becoming Idealists.  Realists would
> like to claim that they're trying to get in touch with reality, whereas the
> idealist reaction seems to suggest that it's all in our heads.  Pragmatists
> would like to stay away from both claims (review, for instance, Pirsig's
> rejection of both scientific realism and subjective idealism in the S/O
> Dilemma in the middle of ZMM).

No need. That passage is probably the main reason why I'm here.

> Against the realists they'd like to say,
> with Pirsig, that we are everywhere and always in touch with reality, we
> could never be globally "out of touch", but, against what the idealists seem
> to say, that there is a difference between the word "chair" and a chair.
> Arlo is reminding us that everything under a description is an intellectual
> pattern (assuming for the moment that language is the currency of the
> intellectual level).

Hmm. I'm not going to pretend that I know whether or not I agree with this :)

> I have never been able to fully grasp where Pirsig places the creation of
> language, social or intellectual.  I think trying to drive a wedge between
> the non-verbal cues we identify as "anger" (let alone far more complicated
> non-verbal interactions that would make up a "family"; how much of a family
> do we have if there are no linguistic exchanges?) and verbalizations like
> "Jackass!" are doomed to failure, or at least philosophical insignificance.
> I don't think there's anything much discrete between them which is why I've
> advocated the collapse of the social/intellectual distinction.  I'm not sure
> that distinction is doing much.

It's certainly caused a lot of problems so far. But I'm convinced that
there's something in it. Reading Mill's 'On Liberty', I get the very
eerie feeling that he was establishing new social patterns of value
(free speech, freedom of self-regarding action...) for the purpose of
unleashing intellect (and individuality?) from the tethers of societal
domination.

> Mike said:
> [Arlo's] suggesting that by naming things, such as "family", we create an
> intellectual pattern. I have a suggestion for keeping things fairly simple
> while staying away from representationalism. I suggest that it is by naming
> "family" that we individuate it _as a pattern_.
> ...
> Now, "habit" is another word for a pattern, isn't it? And some of these
> habits surely pre-date human language. So the problem for this theory is:
> how are these primal habit-patterns individuated and perpetuated? More
> precisely, how do they become patterns or habits in the first place?
>
> Matt:
> That indeed would be a problem, but I think in the focus on language (which,
> as linguistic creatures, is easy to do) you've accidently glossed over what
> I take to be Pirsig's Quality thesis.  Pirsig doesn't make this
> exceptionally explicit, but I take to be a consequence of Pirsig's idea of
> Quality as reality the idea that _individuation itself_ (or as I've called
> it "differentiation") is the basic fact of reality.  If Quality is reality,
> and reality is value, that means that better and worse are basic existents
> of reality, and the differentiation between better and worse is also basic
> (if not logically prior to there actually being better and worse).
>
> The nugget of insight I think you're reaching towards is that _naming_
> something does individuate it, it enters it into a nexus of relations to
> everything else that is, logically speaking, "not family".  I think the
> nonrepresentationalist picture of language that we can extend to Pirsig (or
> find there latent in him) is the notion that language is just another tool
> of differentiation that has evolved in the course of evolutionary history.
> Instead of language being "over here" representing other stuff "over there",
> language and all the other patterns are in one big heap of differentiation.

General agreement with all the above.

> The laws of physics are inorganic patterns of differentiation.

This is up for grabs. But it gives me an opportunity to express a
thought I've had knocking around for a while. IF we accept this claim
(and I'm not sure), it suggests that that inorganic differentation
(evaluation?) is performed by the cosmos as a whole, not by elementary
inorganic particles (which MIGHT be classified as fictitious
intellectual patterns). This in turn suggests an alternative way of
invisiging the levels: instead of building up, e.g.,
particle-organism-society-mind, we could invisage it 'backwards', e.g.
cosmos-species-society-individual. I'm not sure whether any of this is
very useful, though.....