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

[118]

Hi Alexander from Sweden,

Let me say that your English is very readable.  Thank you for the refreshing
post and for your description of Quality through the analogies you
presented.  I could respond paragraph by paragraph, which I sure you will
get from others, and many of the subjects you propose are dealt with in
other posts.  This doesn't suggest you need to scan all the history, but it
means that you are not alone.  You will also find that your attempt at
reconciliation is far from done if you continue to participate.

You dealt with the subjective-objective divide in interesting ways, and the
elusive mind is a fascinating topic.  Some will expand the mind to include
everything, that is no distinction between subject and object.  Others will
shrink the mind to nothing and deny its existence (the Buddhist concept of
emptiness).

We have discussed thermodynamic theory as it relates to MoQ.  Systems theory
is one that I have alluded to in terms of its use in MOQ.  We have also
discussed maps within maps.  All are good for developing MOQ.

So, I will only ask for clarification of one small topic which is presented
in your following statement:
[Alexander]
"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"
[Mark again]
This sense of optimization provides a sense of morality.  And yes, survival
of the fittest is indeed a tautology, but it is hard to find any concept
that is not ultimately self referential since our intellectual level is
artificial and ultimately does not have any strict (or true) foundation, but
rests on itself.

So back to the clarification: How is the degree of freedom conceived?  I am
well familiar with metabolism and the biology, so that is not what I am
asking.  There is a lot written on how structure adapts to meet the
surrounding, which would indicate that such freedom is under a high degree
of control.  So freedom within boundaries is perhaps what you are speaking
to.  If we are operating within a moral system, are there degrees of freedom
within that can be used to provide shape to it?  I am not asking for a
summation of the parts as you put it, but by understanding the parts there
can be inference of the whole, however sketchy or wrong it may be.  Such
inference is then proven or disproved, as theories come and go.

Cheers,
Mark from California.


On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Alexander Jarnroth <
alexander.jarnroth at comhem.se> wrote:

> 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
>
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