[MD] An attempt to reconcile the Metaphysics of Quality with the Cartesian dichotomy and ordinary epistemology

[Alexander Jarnroth]

First I want to beg pardon if I my English in some ways isn't perfect. I'm
not really used to be writing in English.

***

When I read Pirsig's first book, in the end, I was quite disturbed. Though I
approved of what was said, I don't like people just trying to prove that
every interpretation of reality is a superposition. Today, to most people,
that's obvious, but perhaps it wasn't when the book was written.
"Nothing new under the sun", I thought, "it is fun to see that somebody else
has been thinking about the same things as I have, but you can't just tell
people that their ordinary understanding is wrong unless you could offer
them something better. You must be able to go one living, you know".
Then of course, I hadn't yet read Lila, and what an improvement from the
first book!
If I did understand Pirsig right, he first divides primary experience into
two categories, dynamic and static. Second, he divides static into four
parts:
- Physical (nonliving)
- Biological (living)
- Social
- Intellectual
This isn't the interesting thing, but the interesting thing is that he terms
all these levels of moral. I had, before reading, stated this as a
principle: "To strive toward function is rational, but there is no rational
way deciding what function towards which to strive". This principle was
actually based upon mathematical theory of games. In that theory, you have a
set of players, which through a set of rounds, plays a game, for which they
choose a strategy according to which they choose actions, in order to in the
end of the game get that order of results, which maximize their minimum
utility according to some utility function. Choosing that strategy which
achieve this goal, is said to be rational. What the theory actually says,
then, is that rationality is dependent upon your utility function, which
could be chosen arbitrarily.
Now, what about the MoQ? What Pirsig said in Lila was actually: there is in
fact a way to know which utility function to choose.
This solved for me a great dilemma of a kind. But that's not all of it. Had
it been, I could as well have taken Kant's categorical imperative as my
moral advisor.
When, in the book, Pirsig at first mentioned the division of primary
experience into dynamical and static quality, I came to think about another
book, which I had read about a year before. That's Ludwig von Bertalanffy's
General Systems Theory (1968). In the book the author first says that
everything which is called a system is a whole, which function can't be
deduced from the sum of its parts. Systems can then be either closed or
open. A closed system isn't interacting with its surroundings and will in
the end wind down to thermodynamic equilibrium at highest possible entropy.
An open system, however, is exchanging matter, energy/information or both
with its surroundings and can thus sometimes decrease its entropy.
Next he introduces the concept of dynamics and says that every open system
is dynamic, but it can, according to its structure, be more or less dynamic.
And thus he introduces a scale from what he calls high entropy dynamic
function, and low entropy mechanic function of a system.
Reading about Pirsig's MoQ, the analogy with von Bertalanffys GST struck me
immediately.
You could then say, that somehow there ought to be an analogy between the
ability to perceive dynamic quality and dynamic function and an analogy
between the ability to perceive static patterns of quality and mechanic
function.
Now, Systems theory terms itself, according to its own conceptual systems
theory, a synthesist theory rather than reductionist theory. That is, GST is
a creative way trying to describe reality by models and concepts of wholes,
rather than trying to describe everything there is by reducing it to the sum
of some set of parts.
GST doesn't consider the set of parts of a system to be mere elements, but
terms them components and also says that a system isn't just a concrete
system, but also an abstract system, which consists of the set of all
relations between the parts (say that the word concrete here denotes that
which could be explained by classical physics and the such).
For example, the nervous system of a human being is a concrete system, but
the mind is an abstract system, or the hardware of a computer is a concrete
system but the software is an abstract system.
Here could also be considered a concept introduced by Arthur Koestler in The
Ghost in the Machine (1967). He puts experience into a scale ranging from
impressive to expressive.
Here the first distinction is made between sensory perception concerning
external states (objects of perception) and motoric / emotive perceptions
concerning internal states (the subject of perception). Purely impressive
perception then, concerns values for sensory data and purely expressive
perception concerns values for action. Of course, MoQ doesn't make this
distinction concerning dynamic quality, but it does concerning static
quality (that is intellectual patterns of value and non-intellectual
patterns of value).
This, I thought, was analogous to the mathematical concept of mapping. A
mapping is a specified way to transform a pattern from one context to
another, so as to somehow represent the original pattern on the map thus
created. In that way some ordered form of correspondence is established. To
make this interesting, however, you must also choose some property of a
pattern you term as invariant (that is static) and then let other patterns
vary freely (that is being dynamic) and then term all patterns having,
according to some scale, equal invariants as being equal patterns (the
concept is usually applied within geometry and topology, the former having
more invariants than the latter). What is of interest when mapping then, is
which invariants being preserved, that is, which invariants are equal in the
two or more maps.
 While being impressive, the mind somehow maps the world onto itself and
while being expressive the mind maps itself onto the world. According to
Koestler, what is termed empirical science is at the equilibrium point
between impressive and expressive. What you do, when measuring something, is
interaction with it. You try to see, if I do this, what would this thing do
then?
At this point there are a lot of other concepts which could be introduced,
specifically mathematical information theory, probability theory and the
concept of uncertainty.
Information theory is not concerned with meaning, but with the amount of
"things" a given system at a given time and state, could induce into an
observer. This amount is negatively proportional to the entropy of the
system being measured. Now, information, or negentropy, is also equal to the
degree of freedom and the amount of improbability in statistical mechanics.
When there is absolute certainty, the observed system is totally mechanic,
or static with a high degree of freedom but with an amount of probability
tending to zero. When there is absolute uncertainty, the observed system is
totally dynamic, with a low degree of freedom and a probability tending to
unity.
In the first case, you wouldn't need any information about the system to
make it function or perform work. In the second case, you would need an
infinite amount of information about the system to make it function or
perform work.
Now, in reality, these extremes of the concept never occur, but it gives a
lot of extra dimensions to the scale ranging from dynamic to
static/mechanistic.

Living systems, then, interact with their surroundings in such a way as to
optimize their degree of freedom both in term of "flowing energy" and their
own patterns of structure.
The first thing is called metabolism and can be left at that. The second,
however, is the same as the mapping mentioned above.
Consider a primitive cell and its DNA. The pattern of the DNA forms an
abstract system making the concrete system of the cell work according to
some functions of the abstract system. Now, in this respect, the DNA
molecule is mapping its own pattern onto the world.
But how does the DNA map the world onto itself? By evolution and "natural
selection"!
Now first, what is natural selection? "The survival of the fittest" Now,
what is fitness? That's being adapted to the surroundings. But what does
that mean? Well, it means knowing a lot of things about the surroundings. In
usual neodarwinism, you say that natural selection means: the genetic
pattern being most adapted is the pattern managing to reproduce itself on a
larger scale than other patterns, and thus increasing its share of the
population total relative to those other patterns.
But this is, in fact, a tautology. Logically reduced, it becomes "those
becoming most are becoming more than those becoming less".
But if you conceptualize evolution as gathering information about the
present state of the surroundings and thus improving your own interactions
with them, then you have a more fruitful concept. And what does that mean?
Well, the DNA is mapping patterns of the world onto itself.
This is the same thing as said about what the mind does, above.
Considering physical patterns, you could say that any fractal pattern is
about the same thing. Considering social systems, the same could be said
about how the actions of a single individual influence other individuals and
how the actions of other individuals influence a single individual.
Now, we actually have analogues to all four different kinds of static
quality in Pirsig's MoQ.
A concept in itself is an intellectual pattern, or a pattern of the mind
being superimposed upon primary perception. The Cartesian dichotomy between
mind and matter, then, reduces to being the difference between what's inside
the mind and what's being outside, but then mind, being the abstract system
of the concrete nervous system, can't be anything conceptually different
from any other abstract system.
Thus, I hope, is found a map of sorts between statements made within
Pirsig's MoQ and the Cartesian dichotomy / ordinary epistemology.

I want here to mention another concept which I read about in an essay called
Teleology and Biology by Richard T. O'Grady and Daniel R. Brooks (included
in an anthology called Entropy, Information and evolution; new perspectives
on physical and biological evolution (MIT 1989)).
The authors propose a distinction between what they term:
- Teleomaty (causal relationships),
- Teleonomy (ordinary functions) and;
- Teleology (goal-directed)
Now the first could be the static patterns of physical moral, the second of
biological moral and the third of intellectual. Social moral being mixed
teleonomy and teleology.
Teleomatic description of a falling cat would just say that the cat falls
because the gravitational force is working upon it. In a teleonomic
description you must also consider that the cat wasn't falling a few moments
ago, and that it actually has jumped off from a chair. Considering the
falling cat in a teleological way, you perhaps also observed a mouse, and
observed the cat observing the mouse and then saw the cat jumping off the
chair when the mouse was being just in catching distance from it.
It's not exactly the same as Pirsig's static morals, but it offers another
way of reconciliation.

Similarly the self could be considered according to MoQ and GST.
There is a physical self which accelerate towards the ground while falling.
There is also a biological self being concerned primarily with metabolism
and reproduction. Upon that is then the social self, which consists of the
relation between the biological self and other similar such biological
selves (this social self is, as far as I can see, what could survive as a
ghost when someone's dead), that is a component of the abstract social
system. Then you have the last static self, which is the intellectual self,
consisting of this constant mapping between itself and its surroundings.
According to MoQ, though, there ought to be a dynamic self too - consisting
of the changes occurring in the static patterns. I would say that this
somehow lies at the interface between the static patterns and the
surroundings (through the concrete sensomotoric system of the nervous system
and sensory organs). Considering just intellectual self and dynamic self, it
reduces to the function of the mapping between the mind and the world. Thus
it could be called the transcendental self, as it is exceeding anything that
lies within the static self. This interface completes the map mentioned
above and the lack of explanation concerning dynamic quality when
introducing Koestler's concept. That is, dynamic quality becomes,
transformed into the Cartesian conception, the interface between mind and
matter.

All this said, I consider this attempt at reconciliation done. Just some
final words left to be written.
I would say that, knowing what it is you don't know, is the first step of
turning dynamic quality into static quality. Knowing what it is you don't
know is uncertainty. Probably, however, most things you don't know, you
don't know you don't know - and those, still dynamic, could be anything.
Thus there surely is an infinite amount of arguments which I might have
missed, some strengthening this attempt, but some surely making it seem
worthless.
Every time I find a new concept, while reading about it, I try to make
myself believe the author is God telling me the absolute truth. When being
done, the intellectual reevaluation process starts. This is the result of my
own reevaluation process after reading Lila. I don't know if it's anyhow
correct or to what extent it might be or whether if the reader would discern
it or not. Perhaps all this has already been said somewhere prior, or
perhaps the reader finds it too static.
My only way of find out is telling everybody interested what I think and
hope for an answer, and thus improving myself dynamically. Surly you must
have thought about things which I haven't thought about.
In the end, I must agree with Socrates and say that I don't really know
anything.
I hope this has been of interest to the reader and I thank him or her for
taking part and hope that the same person also will somehow respond.

Alexander Jarnroth
Stockholm, Sweden
10.10.2010