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

[MarshaV]

On Aug 1, 2010, at 2:13 PM, David Thomas wrote:

> 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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyTyKe6mlwo&feature=related  


Marsha

 
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