[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> Exactly. So much for your claim that a picture of a city shows a social
> relationship.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Wha..? When did I claim this? You're playing with me, aren't you? 

Quote from Arlo's post of June 10 8:28AM listed in the MD archive:

"I can take a picture of a city. In fact, I have several. Pirsig 
clearly says a "city" is a "social pattern"."

> [Platt]
> I take it you also disagree with Pirsig's description of how life
> emerged from the inorganic level beginning with the carbon atom? His
> version says nothing about collective inorganic behavior reaching a
> point of complexity where life emerged.
> 
> [Arlo]
> You must have read a different Lila than I did. Note the concluding
> sentance in the passage below.
> 
> "What makes all this significant to the Metaphysics of Quality is its
> striking parallelism to the interrelationship of different levels of
> static patterns of quality.
> 
> Certainly the novel cannot exist in the computer without a parallel
> pattern of voltages to support it. But that does not mean that the novel
> is an expression or property of those voltages. It doesn't have to exist
> in any electronic circuits at all. It can also reside in magnetic
> domains on a disk or a drum or a tape, but again it is not composed of
> magnetic domains nor is it possessed by them. It can reside in a
> notebook but it is not composed of or possessed by the ink and paper. It
> can reside in the brain of a programmer, but even here it is neither
> composed of this brain nor possessed by it. The same program can be made
> to run on an infinite variety of computers. A program can change itself
> into a different program while it is running. It can turn on another
> computer, transfer itself into this second computer and shut off the
> first computer that it came from, destroying every last trace of its
> origins-a process with similarities to biological reproduction.
> 
> Trying to explain social moral patterns in terms of inorganic chemistry
> patterns is like trying to explain the plot of a word-processor novel in
> terms of the computer's electronics. You can't do it. You can see how
> the circuits make the novel possible, but they do not provide a plot for
> the novel. The novel is its own set of patterns. Similarly the
> biological patterns of life and the molecular patterns of organic
> chemistry have a "machine language" interface called DNA but that does
> not mean that the carbon or hydrogen or oxygen atoms possess or guide
> life. A primary occupation of every level of evolution seems to be
> offering freedom to lower levels of evolution. But as the higher level
> gets more sophisticated it goes off on purposes of its own."
> 
> Increasing complexity on a level eventually hits a point where "it goes
> off on purposes of its own". As for your other point (on collective
> inorganic behavior), here Pirsig says...
> 
> "The chemistry of life is the chemistry of carbon. What distinguishes
> all the species of plants and animals [BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALS] is, in
> the final analysis, differences in the way carbon atoms [INORGANIC
> INDIVIDUALS] choose to bond [COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR]."

I see nothing in the above Pirsig quotes about 'increasing complexity." 

Platt