[MD] Consciousness

[skutvik at online.no]

Platt, Mel, All. 

16 Dec. 

Bo previously :
> I still have doubts about "dynamic". The most static is in fact what's
> known as the autonomous neural system, the said hard-wired operating
> system, instincts, reflexes. 

Platt:
> Right. Change in, of and by itself doesn't mean a response to DQ. The
> sun rising and setting, the seasons changing, plants growing and
> dying, animals fighting, fleeing. feeding and f ---ing are all examples
> of static patterns. > 

Mel: 
> I replied to Bo, my suspicion that I may have failed to adequately
> discriminate dynamism within a level from dynamism between levels and
> thus may have bred confusion where I sought the opposite. 

The "dynamic within static" issue is a pain in various places, but I'm 
glad that Platt and I agree and that Mel sees a problem here. 

Basically I think the said issue/problem is artificial.  The MOQ's schism 
is DQ/SQ and I find the ocean/wave metaphor useful. The waves are 
ocean too, but it is the difference between the ocean and (its) waves 
which is the point and speculating on the relationship between the part 
of the ocean which is wave-formed and the wave itself is useless, 
there simply is no such relationship. 

The problem this generates is as follows:
 
If a level's internal evolution is a DQ/SQ process, what about the 
transition to the next level? How can the new level pattern be 
recognized as such and not another step of the parent level? This 
troubles me and I have come to regard the changes inside a level 
resulting from some static ground-rules that makes the patterns evolve 
to ever greater complexity, but within these rules.   

Regarding the biological level whose evolution is the only one in SOM. 
Pirsig's opening argument against the "survival of the fittest" sentence 
is splendid (slightly altered by me to highlight the level aspect)

    "Either the biological level is with the inorganic level or it is 
    against it. If it is WITH there's nothing to survive. If it is 
    AGAINST there must be something apart from inorganic value 
    that is motivating it to go against inorganic values (LILA p. 
    144)" 

But this isn't about biological evolution, but how life emerged from 
matter in the first place, and it's here (SOM's) "creation vs darwinian" 
struggle rages. I don't think there are creationists who claim credibility 
who deny the story that fossils tell or believe in the Bible's Genesis in a 
literal sense.  . 

And here MOQ's "carbon as DQ's vehicle to biology" have great clout, 
but Pirsig goes on as if each biological "improvement" was a dynamic 
victory over stability, but  now that Q-evolution had moved to biology 
any victory  must have been victory over BIOLOGICAL stability, and 
that doesn't sound right. Once the biological ground-rules were 
established these evolved more complex organisms until one was 
complex enough to serve for a vehicle to the social level.

At least this is how things look to me at the present time, if anyone has 
a different view I would like to hear it.  

IMO

Bo