[MD] Consciousness

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve, 
 
> On Dec 16, 2008, at 10:22 AM, Platt Holden wrote:
> 
> > [Bo]
> >> Animals awareness (biological value perception) are by senses, hope
> >> we agree about that? Also that sleep isn't present at the lower end
> of
> >> the bio. scale, it has something to do with more complex neural
> >> systems. Regarding "dynamic" in the static range I am skeptical
> >
> 
> An animals awareness can be compared to an infants awareness:
> 
> Lila: "One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires awareness of 
> simple distinctions
> such as pressure and sound, and then at birth acquires more complex 
> ones of light and
> warmth and hunger. We know these distinctions are pressure and sound 
> and light and
> warmth and hunger and so on but the baby doesn't."
> 
> Steve: In other words, for the baby, hunger and sounds and light are 
> not static patterns, yet.
> They are still undifferentiated experience.
> 
> Lila: "We could call them stimuli but the baby doesn't identify them as 
> that. From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, 
> compels attention. This generalized "something," Whitehead's "dim 
> apprehension," is Dynamic Quality. 
> 
> Steve: If we can imagine that from the baby's perspective this is 
> dynamic quality, then from an animal's perspective we can also imagine 
> what dynamic quality is like. But remember as I cautioned recently in a 
> post to Arlo, we are no longer in the perspective of radical empiricism 
> when we imagine what the perspectives of others must be like--whether 
> other humans, or rocks and trees.

The excerpts you cite from Pirsig say that experience and DQ are the same 
whereas in other passages he says experience and Quality are the same:

"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual 
abstractions." (Lila, 5)

Furthermore, Quality (undivided experience) pervades all levels as indeed 
it must. Quality is the same as reality. "Quality is the primary empirical 
reality of the world." (Lila, 5)

Does this mean atoms experience? Pirsig answers in Lila's Child, note 30:
"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."

If the levels can be identified by the reactions of their experiencing 
participants as Pirsig suggests in that answer, then the levels might be 
better named as follows:

Inanimate    (Inorganic)
Instinctual   (Biological)
Institutional (Social)
Individual     (Intellectual)
Ineffable      (Aesthetic) 

These names have a several of advantages. 1)The basic static nature of the 
lower levels as being static (objective) is made clear. 2) The social level 
is clearly identified as human (as Pirsig insists). 3) The importance of 
the arts in putting us in touch with DQ is highlighted ("Beauty leads the 
way forward" -- Gelernter)     

Well, one thing leads to another and I'm afraid I've gotten away from the 
original point, namely, that the experience of animals and babies is 
limited to generalized Quality prior to the intellectual abstractions of 
Dynamic and static.

Platt