[MD] [Bulk] Re: MOQ and the Future: An Inquiry into Usefulness

[MarshaV]

The MOQ is an atheistic religious outlook that solves rather than bypasses
religious problems.
   (Pirsig, Copleston Annotations)





-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Arlo Bensinger
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 3:59 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [Bulk] Re: [MD] MOQ and the Future: An Inquiry into Usefulness

[John]
Yeah and I got a similar with problem with "emerged".  It seems to me 
fraught with fantasy conjecture and connotation stemming from 
psychological motivation to have an explanation - like a baby's head 
emerging from a womb. But who can prove that emergence ever occured?

[Arlo]
Emergence simply says "there is no plan", it says there is no 
"intent" among lower levels to create whatever higher level pattern 
comes from their collective activity. The subatomic particles did not 
intend to make "carbon atoms", and "carbon atoms" do not intend to 
make amoebas. Emergence also says uncertainty is inherent in the 
process. There was no guarantee quarks would form carbon atoms, and 
no guarantee "man" would appear in the cosmos.

In this regard, emergence captures the freedom the MOQ gives to all 
its stable patterns of value. If there was any "plan", any "intent" 
along the way, then there could not have been any Dynamic Quality 
preceding the "plan".

Who can prove it occurred? I suggest you give Steven Johnson's 
"Emergence" a read, for starters.

In the end, as I've said repeatedly, whether one says "emerge" or 
"create", or source or foundation or force or ground, one is using an
analogy.

It does not surprise me in the LEAST you "got a problem" with what I 
am saying. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you didn't.

[John]
Gravity does create mass. Without gravity, there'd be no mass. 
Without Quality, there'd be no cosmos.

[Arlo]
As with Platt, you're stretching the word "create" to mean pretty 
much everything. Quarks create mass too, without them there would be 
no mass. And atoms, of course. And "you", of course, since "mass" is 
an intellectual abstraction based on a set of observations. So you 
create mass as well, John.

This is like saying an oasis "creates" the trees and vegetation that 
surround it. And of course the rain "creates" this as well. And the 
sunlight, you can't forget to say that the sunlight created that 
oasis as well. And "air", you can't have the oasis without air, so 
air created the oasis. And the radiation bands surrounding the earth, 
without those life would be impossible, so they created the oasis 
too. And whatever seismic fault thrust that ground up above sea 
level. That seismic event "created" that oasis too, John. And the 
insects that ensure pollination. They "create" the oasis too. And on 
and on and on and on....

In the end you are left with a meaningless concept of "create", like 
you bemoan "emergence" it ends up not meaning anything.

[John]
An ineffable force that pulls things toward betterness as empirically 
evident as gravity playing the stars.

[Arlo]
Yes, that is one particular metaphor. But it still asks, what is the 
"process" of that "pulling"? What can we say about it? How does it 
occur? Does it entail chance? Does it imply certainty? This is, in 
fact, what I am trying to answer in a dozen posts, that YES, we have 
Quality and YES it is the ground to which evolution occurs. But HOW 
does it "pull"? What is the nature of this "pulling"?

I've described it as "Oops/AHA!/Ahhh..." (and conversely as 
"Oops/AHA!/Bleeech!...) It is not intentional. It does not follow a 
"plan". It preserves the freedom at levels described by the MOQ. It 
says that the evolutionary progress is made possible by the unexpected.

[John]
Oops/AHA/ahhhh....I like it.  Good one Arlo.  I see you have a bit of 
poetry about your soul, you  atheistically evil acerdemic you.

[Arlo]
Well, when I am not brainwashing the minds of my "captive audience", 
or planning on leading a tyrannical revolution against liberty, I try 
to pretend I have a dabble of a soul.

[John]
What drives this rotation?  Not gravity, Arlo.  Quality.

[Arlo]
Well, duh. That was my point. But here too, since you are using the 
metaphor "drive", one can ask, what is the nature of this "driving"? 
How does it work? What does it mean? My answer is that Quality does 
not manipulate, interfere, order, orchestrate or design anything.

As I said it before. Quality does not "create", Quality simply "is". 
(Did I just give a nod to Ham as well? Dear Goddess, what is the 
world coming to?!)

Creation occurs in response to Quality. I've said this a dozen or 
more times too.

[John]
... but in short I think that it is important to keep religion and 
philosophy separate.  If that's Arlo's main beef, then I concur with him.

[Arlo]
I have several main beefs, in this case its that the MOQ does not get 
presented as a theism-minus-personality. That is, we keep all the 
primary attributes of "god", assign them to "Quality", but drop the 
cultural-personal stuff like the name, that "he" talks, etc.  The 
exact thing Platt admitted when he said the only distinction between 
"God created carbon atoms" and "Quality created carbon atoms" is "the
subject".

[John]
A philosophy that despises all religious thinking at the outset 
because of valuistic reasons is completely out of step with the mass 
of mankind from the start.  And too statically dogmatic for MY taste for
sure.

[Arlo]
I certainly do not despise "religious thinking". I am an avid reader 
of mythology, and a big fan of people like Joseph Campbell. I tend 
towards appreciation of the so-called "pagan myths" more than the 
Occidental, but that is because I find them far less imbalanced. And, 
of course, neither or nor the MOQ despises Buddhist thinking, in fact 
I think this plays very heavily in Pirsig's writing.




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