[MD] experience

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>:


> The MOQ posits that inorganic patterns of value "experience" inorganic value.

For the sake of common sense if nothing else I would interpret the MOQ as positing
that the inorganic patterns of value that "experience" inorganic values are limited
to particles, atoms, and molecules that are essential components of the human brain
on which our experience (and thus knowledge of value patterns) depends.

In short there’s no evidence that gravity, rocks or motorcycles experience. But if
the brain is the seat of our experience, and if it is dependent on the aforementioned
particles, atoms and molecules, then we can infer that they too are experiential
entities. 

To claim the building blocks of the brain are as inert as rocks is to posit that our
capacity to experience emerges from something akin to dirt. That stretches credulity
a lot more than Pirsig’s assertion that inorganic elements experience values at their
own level.

How particles, atoms and molecules managed to evolve into organisms (whose capacity
to experience is hardly in doubt) is as much a mystery today as it has ever been.
Pirsig’s explanation of “betterness” is a good as any and certainly better than
“emergence” which explains nothing.

So I agree with Arlo about inorganic entities experiencing, but not forces like
gravity or aggregates like rocks and motorcycles.

Platt


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