[MD] Consciousness

[Platt Holden]

Bo:
 
> 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. 

> Bo: 
> 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.  
 
Somehow "greater complexity" smacks of a nonexplanation like science's 
magical "emergence." Besides, it omits the role of DQ which, as you know, 
is the central actor in Pirsig's evolutionary morality. 

The evolutionary advantage of human society was language, or more 
specifically, the invention and use of symbols to represent patterns of 
experience. This advancement freed humans form the animalistic prison of 
the here and now, enabling them to carry experiences from the past into the 
future. Thus, biological death was overcome in the passing of knowledge 
from one generation to the next, allowing faster progress towards 
evolutionary betterness.

When did DQ play the pivotal role? Through the first brujo type individual 
who pointed to an edible plant and said, "Baboo." From then humanity took 
off with one DQ-inspired revelation after another, building on those that 
occurred before, eventually becoming the institutions we know today. 

Another scenario anyway.

Platt

   





> 
> Bo
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