[MD] differences between MoQ and SOM

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Zenith [Platt quoted] --


[LILA, Chpt. 12]:
 - "The 'Laws of Nature' are moral laws."  (Free Will?)

[Zenith]:
> I would not consider this to be about free will.
> The Laws of Nature, such that govern the movement of atoms,
> are moral laws in the sense that they involve value-sensibility
> that, as Ham points out, Pirsig allows even to objective
> phenomena like atoms. I think Pirsig is reiterating the idea that
> Quality can be sensed even by inorganic objects. The laws of
> entropy, of gravity, of thermodynamics are best described by
> saying that heat "likes" to dissipate or that objects "like" to
> exert forces on one another.

In the paragraph that precedes these statements, Pirsig writes: "The 
Metaphysics of Quality says that if
moral judgments are essentially assertions of value and if value is the 
fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgments are the 
fundamental ground-stuff of the world."

This is another example of a syllogism with an undistributed middle.  But, 
irrespective of the false logic, "moral judgments" are made by conscious 
individuals, not by the world.  It is man's intellect that impugns morality 
to the universe and "asserts" that this is value.  Electrons and moons are 
not held to their orbits by "preference" or "value" but by 
electro-mechanical or gravitational attraction.  Heat doesn't dissipate 
because "it likes to."  This kind of thinking is neither philosophical nor 
scientific; it's childish animism based on a naive interpretation of 
physical behavior.

Platt quotes the author of Lila's Child as saying: "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."  This conclusion doesn't 
rectify Pirsig's fallacy.  Again, it is pure animism.  Unrealized value is a 
logical absurdity.  There is no experience without sensible awareness.  And 
awareness isn't biological, social or intellectual - it's psychic, 
subjective, and without an existential referent.  We're talking about 
experiential (SOM) reality here, not metaphysics, and we cannot describe our 
"real world" of relational existence in any other terms than subject/object 
experience.

The "essence" of reality is something else, possibly another issue for 
discussion.  But MoQers make the mistake of confusing the two by defining 
physical reality as Value, Quality, Morality, or Intellect, all of which are 
subjective constructs.  That's man's role, not Nature's.

Thanks for trying to reconcile my cosmology with Platt's response, Zenith. 
However, I fear that never the twain shall meet.

Essentially yours,
Ham


 ---------------------
>> - "Chemistry professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible
>> cause-and-effect forces of the cosmos force them to do so." 
>> (Determinism?)
>
> ----------------------
> I imagine its a standard definition of determinism
> ----------------------
>
>> - "We can just as easily deduce the morality of atoms from the 
>> observation
>> that chemistry professors are, in general, moral."  (Then comes the
>> syllogism to "prove" it.)
>>
>> With all due respect to the author, this is nonsense.  First of all, 
>> Pirsig
>> himself as much as tells us that experience creates our reality, which
>> suggests that any Free Will or Determinism perceived in existence is an
>> attribution by the cognizant subject.  What must occur before the 
>> experience
>> of process and causes is individuated awareness and its sense of Value.
>> Pirsig calls this sensibility "pre-intellectual experience", but he does 
>> not
>> posit it as proprietary to the subject.  In fact, he gives as much
>> value-sensibility to atoms and other objective phenomena as he gives to 
>> the
>> individual who observes them.  If man is not a free agent, where is the 
>> Free
>> Will?   Whose will is it that creates the universe?  Obviously, Pirsig 
>> wants
>> to be on the side of the objectivists who claim that everything is the
>> result of cause-and-effect determinism.
>>
>> [Platt]:
>>> The premise is accepted by many physicists who believe all is
>>> simply different forms of energy. That's at the root of Pirsig's
>>> criticism of SOM. How does "everything is different forms of
>>> energy" explain quality?  In fact, how does it explain "different
>>> forms?"  (That's when "oops" comes in.)  As for configuring
>>> atoms of a person, I'm sure you're familiar with, "Beam me up,
>>> Scotty."  Fiction now, but who knows?
>>
>> [Ham] Apart from the "oops" factor and the fact that the MoQ is a 
>> metaphorical
>> representation of physical existence, do you really believe that a human
>> being is no more than a particular arrangement of atoms or energy 
>> patterns?
>
> --------------
> Someone once said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that 
> it is at all intelligible. The "oops" factor, emergent properties, 
> patterns, Quality... could they be the same?
>
> As for a person being "nothing more" than an arrangement of atoms or 
> energy patterns, well, why not? Isn't a sculpture of an elephant "nothing 
> more" than an arrangement of stone or welded metal or whatever? But no, 
> its also art! A person is also character, spirit, soul!
>
> The key word is "arrangement." Therein lies the magic. As Craig pointed 
> out, "the MoQ LEVELS address this issue." On the inorganic level, all we 
> are is stardust. Only on a higher level do things like personality and 
> social status come into play. Sorry, that's what I think!
>
>> Do your worst,
>> Zenith
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/