[MD] What is SOM?

[Platt Holden]

> > [Krimel]
> > This is not an invitation to ignore or devalue the study of
> > the nervous system where in ALL experience resides. Like consciousness
> > experience is not a thing, it is a process. It is a process that takes
> > place among the biological patterns of a nervous system.
> 
> [Platt]
> Krimel's assertions are not only denied by sponges (they have no nervous
> system), but also by Pirsig who inhabits a somewhat higher level:
> 
> "I think the answer is that inorganic objects experience events but do not
> react to them biologically socially or intellectually.  They react to
> these 
> experiences inorganically, according to the laws of physics." Note 30, 
> Lila´s Child
> 
> [Krimel]
> And what a lovely example of the fuzziness of taxonomy. Sponges are at
> the
> borderline of plants and animals. In what sense does a plant or a sponge
> have experience? Purely at the biological level. Then "experience" of an
> individual sponge is only recorded in its genetic structure. That memory
> of
> what worked and didn't in an individual sponges is manifest in the next
> iteration of the species. But the events in an individual sponge's life
> do
> not impact its own future behavior at least in terms of the sponge's
> individual ability to choose its destiny.
> 
> I find Pirsig's use of many terms sloppy. "Experience" is one of them.
> It
> has lead to the stagnation, confusion and lack of progress in the MoQ. I
> think Pirsig has remarkable instincts for pointing in the right
> direction
> but I am afraid that leaves many like yourself just staring at his
> finger.

I'm afraid your finger points in only one direction -- down. Such 
reductionism can be helpful at times, but it utterly fails, as Pirsig said, 
to answer, "Why does any life survive?" 

Maybe you should take another look at the direction Pirsig's finger points.

Platt