[MD] Animals and Dynamic Quality

[pholden at davtv.com]

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

> [Platt]
> Please notice the past tense: "they've done so . . ."
> 
> [Arlo]
> Which says nothing to the statement that "it's "better" and that this
> definition of "betterness"  — this beginning response to Dynamic Quality...""

Past tense, over, done with, happened once -- get it? The statement speaks about
the creation of life by inorganic patterns, a beginning response to DQ.   

> You keep saying "I can't answer these questions", but that's simply avoidance.

I don't say that. I say read Chapter 11 of Lila. There you will find your answers.

> As to "when a cat became a cat", its a matter of biological evolution. There
> was a time when a given pattern was not a cat, and a time when it was. The
> difference is biological.

Can a "given patten" be both a cat and not a cat. I don't so. 

> And it is that "difference" which you can't answer at all from your view. Could
> animals ever respond to DQ? That's a simple yes or no. If they could, what was
> the difference between "animals then" and "animals now"? All this avoidance is
> simply to give "man" some false transcendence of the cosmos.

Only in your mind. But that man is higher in the moral hierarchy there is no doubt.

> You say quite adamantly that "animals can not respond to DQ". I ask "could they
> ever?". Speculate on how they differed? You avoid this because the only answer
> that makes any sense is that they could respond to DQ biologically then just as
> they can now. The difference in man is not "responding to DQ", but "responding
> to DQ from the vantage of the social and intellectual levels of which his
> "self" is constructed". 

Boy, you do go off on tangents and come to weird conclusions don't you, ascribing
all sorts of devious motives to me.

> Because if it is some biological trait that sets man apart, then animals NOR
> ANYTHING ELSE could have ever responded to DQ. And if animals could have
> repsonded to DQ at one time, then they must have had the biology to enable
> this. Did they lose it? And again, how did they behave any differently?

Who said anything about a biological trait setting man apart? Ever here of
the social and intellectual levels, much less the passage of time?

> If you say that at one time DQ was experienced by animals through their
> biology, but that this was lost when man "invented" social patterns, I ask "did
> animals in North America lose their ability to respond to DQ when man in Africa
> developed social patterns"? 

"If I say . . ." Your imagination is working overtime. 

> These are the inconsistencies and illogical things you bring into play with
> your claim. So try to answer them, Platt. Or think about why you can't. And if
> you want to speculate a few answers, and toss them around, I'm game. In the
> meantime, we've said our two bits.

What is my claim? That my cat's behavior is governed by its static patterns of
value. That's what I claim. Otherwise I simply agree with Pirsig: "By contrast
the Metaphysics of Quality, also going back to square one, says that man is
composed of static levels of patterns of evolution with a capability of response
to Dynamic Quality." (Lila, 24)

Now if you will be so good to answer these questions you have avoided: 

You seem to make two assumptions about DQ. First, that if something can't be
predicted it must be a response to DQ. Second, if it moves, it must be
responding to DQ. Is this correct?
 










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