[MD] The "code of Art" is not a level

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Arlo, All

Arlo:
> But, as you say,
> this must also occur within a framework that places the "code of art"
> (Pirsig's speculation about what "level" would be above intellect) above
> intellect, and all with an eye towards the undifferentiated aesthetic
> continuum (my words) of Quality.


Steve:
I'm glad you put level in quotes, because there is so much confusion
about the "code of Art" phrase that Pirsig used, and so many have
tried to turn it into level above intellect.

I'm feeling a little irritable today, so while I have already attacked
Bo and Platt, I'm also going to take on another anoying problem with
people's use of Pirsig in taking teh "code of Art" idea to places
Pirsig never intended.

The problem is confusion between what Pirsig means by a level and what
he means by a moral code. A close reading of the quotes below my
signiture where Pirsig talks about moral codes as opposed to levels
shows that what Pirsig means by a "level" is  the collection of all
patterns of value of a given type, and what he means by "code" is the
way the conflicts between adjeacent levels are resolved in society.
Pirsig says that "the isolation of these static moral codes was
important.  They were really little moral empires all their own, as
separate from one another as the static levels whose conflicts they
resolved." How could a code be a level if the codes resolve the
conflicts between levels?

Pirsig goes on to explain that what is traditionally thought of as
morality is only the social-biological moral code, the code that is
used to resolve conflicts between social and biological patterns of
value. Note that he calls this code the socio-biological code. It is
neither the biological level nor the social level. Now the codes have
to fit in somewhere since everything is a pattern of value or
collection of patterns of value, so what type of pattern of value is
the socio-biological moral code itself? It is a social pattern of
value, but it is not the social level itself which is the collection
of ALL social patterns of value.

Next he explains that what is understood as Human Right is the code
that is used to resolve conflicts between intellectual and social
patterns of value. Then Pirsig goes on to describe the code of Art. he
doesn't say that this code of Art is not a level since that goes
without saying. None of the codes are levels! He says that the code of
Art is not really even a code. Why not? It doesn't resolve conflicts
between two types of static patterns like the other codes. It is the
resolution of conflicts between dynamic quality and all static
patterns. It is described not so much in terms of principles of how we
should proceed as with the other codes but is instead described using
such concepts as static latching, progress, and degeneracy--things we
can only talk about after the fact, ideas that are not useful as a
code to guide behavior like other moral codes.

Best,
Steve





from Lila:
"What the evolutionary structure of the Metaphysics of Quality shows is that
there is not just one moral system.  There are many.  In the Metaphysics of
Quality there's the morality called the "laws of nature," by which
inorganic patterns triumph over chaos; there is a morality called the "law
of the jungle" where biology triumphs over the inorganic forces of
starvation and death; there's a morality where social patterns triumph over
biology, "the law;" and there is an intellectual morality, which is still
struggling in its attempts to control society.  Each of these sets of moral
codes is no more related to the other than novels are to flip-flops.
What is today conventionally called "morality" covers only one of these
sets of moral codes, the social-biological code.  In a subject-object
metaphysics this single social-biological code is considered to be a minor,
"subjective," physically non-existent part of the universe.  But in the
Metaphysics of Quality all these sets of morals, plus another Dynamic
morality are not only real, they are the whole thing.

...Rigel was just pushing a narrow tradition-bound socio-biological code of
morals which it was certain he didn't understand himself.
As Phædrus had gotten into them he had seen that the isolation of these
static moral codes was important.  They were really little moral empires
all their own, as separate from one another as the static levels whose
conflicts they resolved:

First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of biological
life over inanimate nature.  Second, there were moral codes that
established the supremacy of the social order over biological
life-conventional morals-proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery,
theft and the like.  Third, there were moral codes that established the
supremacy of the intellectual order over the social order-democracy, trial
by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.  Finally there's a fourth
Dynamic morality which isn't a code.  He supposed you could call it a "code
of Art" or something like that, but art is usually thought of as a such a
frill that that title undercuts its importance.  The morality of the brujo
in Zuñi-that was Dynamic morality.
What was emerging was that the static patterns that hold one level of
organization together are often the same patterns that another level of
organization must fight to maintain its own existence.  Morality is not a
simple set of rules.  It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns
of values.  This conflict is the residue of evolution.  As new patterns
evolve they come into conflict with old ones.  Each stage of evolution
creates in its wake a wash of problems."