[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Andre]
Hi Arlo,I would like to know where that 'suggestion' of Pirsig comes 
from. Is there a specific page number in either ZMM or Lila?

[Arlo]
The passage Platt uses to justify his claim is from LILA, "These 
patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality. 
Only a living being can do that." Platt's justification for his 
interpretation (as he wrote in a post) is that this quote is "stated 
in a context of human beings".

Taking Pirsig literally (despite Platt's claim of "context") would 
still allow the perception to DQ to continue at the biological level 
and up. But still, IMO, it is one of the more troubling (and 
ultimately illogical and ahistorical) elements of Pirsig's ideas. I 
would say a much better (a more integrated) idea would be to say 
"only a living being can respond to DQ with a repertoire of responses 
enabled and constrained by its biological boundedness". Taking 
Platt's context into account, we could say "Only a human being can 
respond to DQ with a repertoire of responses made possible by her/his 
participation in the social and intellectual levels".

Only a human can respond to DQ "intellectually", this would make more 
sense MOQ-wise. (Although I still have troubles with that, as I'd 
allow very rudimentary intellectual responses to describe some 
primate/mammalian species (such as dolphins, perhaps, or gorillas)). 
Said this way, a cat can respond to DQ "biologically" (as we see 
everyday), and a carbon atom continues to respond to DQ "inorganically".

In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense to consider the levels as 
"adverbs" to describe particular responses to DQ. Thus the "inorganic 
level" is the level where patterns respond to DQ "inorganically". The 
social level is the level where patterns respond to DQ "socially". Etc.

I'd also argue that seen this way, each level becomes an ecology of 
interacting individual patterns, and it is FROM this collective 
activity that higher levels of patterns emerge. Thus from any focal 
view of the cosmos we would see (define) "individual patterns" and 
see the "collective activity" from which the patterns on a higher 
focal level emerge.