[MD] MOQ Recursion

[skutvik at online.no]

Craig, DMB, All. 

I came in the middle of this argument, but seem to spot the infamous 
Lila Child annotation that DMB once protested  (in the long-winded 
"What came first" thread from 2003) before Paul Turner turned his 
head. 

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

But one thing must be clarified."Ideas" in themselves are NOT 
intellectual patterns, they are the subjective part that, together with 
their alleged objective counterparts (what we have ideas about) make 
up the intellectual level's S/O patterns. This goes for "concepts" and or 
"thoughts" as well. The "object" may be an abstract or an idea as well, 
but this dualism in ever so subtle varieties is intellect's hallmark.      
 
dmb says:
> That's right. An inorganic pattern of value is one of four conceptual
> categories in the metaphysics of Quality. 

Nowhere does the MOQ say that its levels are "conceptual categories" 
this ends in absurdity, According to DMB intellect's patterns are ideas 
(concepts) and when - in addition - all levels are concepts, intellect 
becomes doubly conceptual. No, intellect's (science's) "physics" have 
nothing to do with the inorganic LEVEL. When the intellectual level 
(science) speaks about "inorganic" it is its own matter realm. This 
indiscriminate SOM-MOQ mish-mash is disaster.      

> 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. 

Sic! 

Craig 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? 

Right, this is "Lila's Child"-inspired nonsense (I don't have the book 
here, to show the horrible annotation about ideas' migration through 
the levels). As Craig says, the Q-inorganic is the first of four levels that 
ends with intellect, moreover, ideas are NOT intellect's patterns, only 
paired with what ideas are about. Ideas were SOM's mind-content.   

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. 

I leave this a show-case in obscurantism.   

Bodvar