[MD] MOQ Recursion

[david buchanan]

Craig said:
But aren't ideas INTELLECTUAL patterns of value?  If so, you have inorganic povs are intellectual povs.


dmb says:
That's right. An inorganic pattern of value is one of four conceptual categories in the metaphysics of Quality. It is an idea that's integrated into a larger system of ideas. It is also a way to re-conceptualize scientific data and the laws of causality. It expands the notion of evolution downward and offers some interesting challenges to scientific materialism in general. 



Craig said to dmb:
It seems your argument is: 1) The idea of matter was derived from experience 2) matter is inorganic povs 3)  inorganic patterns of value are ideas derived from experience.
 But why hold 2) rather than saying inorganic  povs are different than ideas?



dmb replies:

Huh? The argument you present as mine doesn't strike me as mine or even as an argument. "Matter" and "inorganic patterns" are both ideas and they're both derived from experience. They both refer to "physical reality" as it's experienced. You won't stub your toe on these terms but they all refer to the hardness felt in such an experience. Newton's notion of inertia could be used to explain why your toe is bleeding too, if you were hanging out with an unsympathetic nerd. But Pirsig puts it the way he does to deal with philosophical problems because he's a philosopher doing philosophy. So of course "inorganic pattern of value" is a philosophical concept. Experience is the reality from which this concept and ALL other concepts are derived. 
I'm guessing you want rocks and stuff to be the reality from which concepts of matter and inorganic patterns are derived. You want this thing to ground out in a pre-existing objective reality. It doesn't. Experience itself is the primary empirical reality. That's what makes radical empiricism so damn radical.