[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Matt,

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.  
The laws of physics are inorganic patterns of differentiation.  Biological 
patterns created new ways of differentiation.  All the creation of language 
did was to create a new way to differentiate.  Now we differentiate by 
naming stuff, alongside having sex with sruff or falling off of stuff.

Steve:

I think that Pirsig would say that the laws of physics are intellectual patterns of value that describe inorganic patterns of value. I say this because of the ghosts discussion in ZAMM where he says that Newton's Laws of Gravitation exist only in our minds. At that time he didn't describe them as referring to anything, but I think that is because he had not yet defined a type of experience called inorganic patterns of value. I think in the MOQ ideas do represent other types of experience. They can represent inorganic, biological, social, or other intellectual patterns of value.

I'm guessing that there is something you don't like about that so I'm looking forward to your response.

Regards, 
Steve





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