[MD] Dynamic within static.

[Platt Holden]

Hi Bo, 

[Platt]
> > 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. 

[Bo] 
> Really Platt. Don't you see greater complexity with a mammal 
> organism than an amoeba? Yes it omits DQ's role (I thought that was 
> what you too omitted from various events/change witin the static 
> range?) I just wonder what SQ's role is if everything is DQ? 

[Platt]
The complexity argument strikes me as an example of the Questionable Cause 
fallacy which involves drawing the conclusion that A causes B simply 
because A and B are in regular conjunction. As for SQ's role, Pirsig 
explains the necessity of it. Of that I'm sure you know.   

[Platt] 
> > 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.

[Bo]
> Not that fast! IMO the ability to carry experience from the past into the
> future AKA intelligence) began at the biological level as RAMemory 
> and the manipulation of this "...if I do this, such will happen" (without
> language, without any notion of future/past or this being abstract) but 
> never mind, this requires another essay.

[Platt]
Animals have memory but not the capacity to pass it on from one generation 
to the next. What they do have is instinct -- a static pattern of behavior 
without choice, preventing them from responding to DQ. Plants, ants and 
antelopes are stuck.  

{Platt]
> > 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. 

[Bo] 
> The Brujo story is about how the "static" Zuñi society was altered - 
> dynamically according to Pirsig - my tentative objection is if every 
> increment within the social level is due to a dynamic intervention, how 
> did the Q-evolution ever escape the social level  .... or ever escape the 
> inorganic level for that matter? Life would merely be ever more 
> dynamic inorganic patterns. No? 

[Platt]
As you know, Pirsig doesn't get specific:

"The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their 
situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies 
Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons. 
Therefore, to the question, 'What is the purpose of all this intellectual 
knowledge?' the Metaphysics of Quality answers, 'The fundamental purpose of 
knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve society.' Knowledge has 
grown away from this historic purpose and become an end in itself just as 
society has grown away from its original purpose of preserving physical 
human beings and become an end ir itself, and this growing away from 
original purposes toward greater Quality is a moral growth. But those 
original purposes are still there. And when things get lost and go adrift 
it is useful to remember that point of departure." (Lila, 24)

Pinpointing the individual who initiated the changes in response to DQ is 
impossible until human written history where individuals like the brujo, 
Einstein, Bohr, Monet and many other persons of high achievement were  
catalysts of evolutionary advancement.

[Bo]
> I'm not insisting, just want to examine this aspect.

Hope my thoughts are helpful whether accepted or not. 

Platt