[MD] Bo's right! For all the wrong reasons? (Part2)

[David Thomas]

Continued from Part 1

Continuing to explore what "the problem" might be if we use Pirsig's
ordering method and ask, "What comes first?"
He answers, " Dynamic quality,...,creates this world in which we live,"
But if you ask, "How?,"What it's source?" Etc? The mystics and myths of
religion and science speak volumes but never arrive at an answer all can
agree on. There was nothing then there was something is about the best we
get.  But we must agree that this is a pretty discrete and radical change.
Nothing then the expanding and evolving inorganic level. If we stay away
from all the religious implications of DQ (which of course Pirsig does not)
so far so good. 

But as we move to the next level, biological, we immediately run into a
problem. Where does organic chemistry lie? Certainly it can't by definition
be inorganic. But if the line dividing the biological from the inorganic is
life there are clearly organic compounds that are not biological. Methane
for instance is found across the universe but life has only been found here.
Oh that cross-dresser carbon! Diamond follows the inorganic rules, snot does
not. Houston we have at least one problem. Pirsig claims that the MoQ covers
everything and the levels are discrete. Where does organic chemistry lie
within it? Do we side with Magnus and add a level? If so what does it do to
the whole system? If carbon straddles the line between inorganic and
biological what about level discreteness? The moral order? Is carbon as snot
more moral than carbon as a diamond? I don't know but it is at least a real
problem.

Moving on up the biological level we quickly encounter the problem that was
identified very early on in these discussions. Social qualities, patterns,
on the biological level. Pirsig quickly cleared this up indicating that he
was talking about qualities of human societies. So the talk turned to what
were those qualities that distinguished animal societies from human
societies. Language was a good first guess. My most recent guess is design.
Most usually associated with objects ranging from stone tools to skyscrapers
the process is also used in seeking social changes of all kinds.  It is an
abstract mental process. Design theorist J Christopher Jones says that at
its simplest design is "to initiate change in man-made things" be they
"capital goods, laws, buildings, opinions, public services, processes, etc"
in short almost everything people are involved with. It requires a basic
concept of time, past, present, and future. Jones continues,
"Designers...are forever bound to treat as real that which exists only in
the imagined future and have to specify (find or create) ways in which the
foreseen thing can be made to exist. The first human to start fire without
saving embers was designing. So was the first to attach a stone point to a
shaft. So was Cinderella's evil stepmother.

But whether it was language, design, or a host of other candidates, "What is
the essential quality necessary to make the jump from animal social to human
social level?"

I think it can be said with confidence that at the biological level it has
something to do with the evolution of human brain. Since intelligence, like
social qualities, seems to span from deep within the biological level all
the way up to the intellectual it does not seem to be a good choice of
terms. Needs to be something that separates, transcends, intelligence. Mind
would be a reasonable term if it were not so deeply tied to Descartes and
SOM. The term with all the qualities necessary to jump from animal social to
human social is INTELLECT. The emergence of the human social level was/is
dependant on the emergence of the INTELLECT. Pirsig at best got the two
upper layers bassakwards. If the emergence of the biological level emerged
with the first faint glimmer of life how is it that, even though Pirsig
admits that the intellect emerged long before the intellectual level, that
the emergence of the intellect however dim does not signal the arrival of
the intellectual level? With this realization I finally made the decision
that Bo was and is right the MoQ is screwed up. Just not as he thought. It
is probably screwed up beyond reason or repair. And that is without getting
into the mystical access to DQ or trying to figure out where dreams may lie.

Aren't you sorry that you wasted your time? I'm not. My intellect needed the
exercise.

Dave