[MD] Idealistic static value patterns
mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net
mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net
Thu Dec 22 18:20:52 PST 2011
Marsha, all,
I made this into a separate topic because it's gonna branch probably.
"I think
> to categorize patterns into the four-level, evolutionary,
> hierarchical structure: inorganic, biological, social and
> intellectual is brilliant, rational, modern, and suggests a way to
> bridge Western science with Eastern wisdom. But this is only my own
> perspective."
Generally I agree. I don't tend to call things brilliant, though, if
there is any realistic chance I could improve them. Otherwise the
platform on which they are lifted becomes awkwardly high. But that's
not very important.
I don't know what the patterns exactly do to bridge Eastern wisdom to
Western science. But the DQ/SQ split does something in that area. It's
a pretty Westernized version of something that is said in chapter 30
of the Diamond Sutra.
The patterns are great. But I'd like to be more specific. The patterns
are good, because:
-They are an ontology that can assign a moral value to everything it
can express.
-Their emergence is clearly divided into four levels, whose
evolutionary distance to each other appears to be similar, and which
appear to go all the way up.
Their primary disadvantage is, that they are a variant of emergent
physicalism, because the bottom pattern, from which other patterns
emerge, is inorganic. This isn't a disadvantage in itself. It's a
disadvantage because Pirsig didn't develop a parallel system of
patterns that would be idealistic. Instead, he says in the SODV paper
that the patterns explain Cartesian dualism, which makes things worse.
Let's express Pirsig's patterns in the form of some kind of axiomatic
statements:
---
1. Inorganic pattern: Stability triumphs (= is morally superior to) entropy.
This means it's better to have physical structures that are available
for doing mechanical work instead of having an inert mess of
disconnected particles.
2. Biological pattern: Reproduction triumphs stability.
This means simple organisms, such as bacteria, are morally superior to
diamonds, even though diamonds are extremely stable. It doesn't mean a
jar of germs should cost more than a diamond, just that no life will
arise of the diamonds in any reasonable amount of time, but simple
organisms could conceivably evolve to complex organisms in millions or
billions of years.
3. Social pattern: Cooperation triumphs reproduction.
Without the social pattern, we would live in what Thomas Hobbes calls
a "war of all against all".
4. Intellectual pattern: Understanding triumphs cooperation.
Just because something is a social custom doesn't mean it's right.
---
So those are Pirsig's patterns. But earlier, I was speaking of
normative patterns, which contain math and formal logic. Pirsig seeks
for the domain of maths and logic in the 2003 letter to Paul Turner,
but ends up including them into the intellectual level of the MOQ,
which he defines as an empiricist theory in LILA.
To be sure, there is an argument for mathematics being empirical. But
it doesn't change the fact that once maths has been separated from any
observations mathematical rules seem to bear resemblance to, it's just
an axiomatic system, which doesn't inherently describe anything.
Although it is, with good justification, believed to describe things,
it's in no way mandatory to believe that, even if one is a
mathematician. The descriptive powers of axiomatic systems are
irrelevant for someone trying to prove a theorem.
So it's okay to put maths in the intellectual level, but that doesn't
really capture very much of the essence of maths. The normative
patterns do a better job at that. They are Pirsig's static value
patterns minus the assumption that existence is fundamentally
inorganic. And nothing is added to replace that assumption. That
assumption is simply dropped.
---
1N. Existence pattern: Availability triumphs unavailablity.
Availability is a precondition for everything else. In the inorganic
level, availability of matter means that there is not so much entropy
that the matter cannot be manipulated in any reasonable way. But in
the normative level, we don't say that. We just say that things have
to be available for use.
In axiomatic systems, existing entities are symbols that are available
for manipulation.
2N. Increment pattern: Replication triumphs availability.
If something - no matter what it is - can replicate in large numbers,
it transcends the notion of availability. If it replicates into five
instances, there will be five available entities instead of one.
In axiomatic systems, increment entities are things such as variables
and coefficients, which generalize the notion of existence to span a
larger area it otherwise would.
3N. Interaction pattern: Interaction triumphs replication.
If entities can interact for purposes other than replicating
themselves, they will form new, more complex entities.
In maths, interaction entities are things like functions, transforms
and topology.
4N. Control pattern: Control triumphs interaction.
Even the complex entities must abide to some limitations that are
present in the world in which they operate. The nature of the complex
entities cannot be understood without understanding these limitations
that affect them.
In axiomatic systems, control pattern includes things like
axiomatization, elimination and completeness.
---
So what's the point of all this? Why make a bunch of normative
patterns? Just for the sake of explaining the morality of mathematics?
Why not, but they can be used for other things, too.
The normative patterns can be used to generalize the notion of static
value pattern. Basically, the simplest possible generalization would
have only two patterns, but Pirsig uses four, and in that context it's
simpler that I also use four.
If the notion of static value pattern is generalized, it becomes
possible to create theories of static value patterns that are not
physicalistic like Pirsig's patterns. For example, it would be
possible to create idealistic static value patterns.
According to LILA, the MOQ is an empiricist theory. That's another
reason why it doesn't contain Cartesian dualism or idealism. You can't
base the existence of the idealistic or Cartesian mind on empirical
observation, because the mind is already there at the moment you start
making observations. So you can't arrive to it. Instead, you have to
start from it. The MOQ would maybe have to be rationalistic in order
to contain the idealistic mind or the Cartesian mind. Maybe not, but
it should have a more mentally focused ontology. Saying that we have
here an empiricist emergent ontology with "inorganic quality" as the
bottom pattern makes it more or less impossible to have the theory be
anything besides a variant of emergent physicalism.
The normative patterns can be used to construct an idealistic theory
of static value patterns. It is done by adding the initial premise,
that entities consist of mental quality. So the mental pattern is the
bottom pattern.
---
1I. Mental pattern: Thought truimphs blankness.
It's better that there are thoughts than that there is nothing.
2I. Communication pattern: Communication triumphs thought.
This is the increment pattern of idealistic patterns. It states that
thoughts increment by means of communication. Even at the time a small
child begins to learn language, he does it by means of imitation. And
at a later age, it's much easier to gain fundamentally new ways of
thinking by talking with others and reading books than by being in
isolation.
3I. Personality pattern: Identity triumphs communication.
When a person spends enough time with another person, he learns to
make generalizations of what kind of communcation quality should he
expect that person to provide. More generally, the notion of identity
allows people to specialize in certain areas, to take roles, and to
know their strengths. At the most primitive stage, the personality
pattern only introduces the notion that not all people share the same
mind. Small children do not know this.
Let's suppose a child observes, when a person puts an apple into a red
box and then goes away. Another person takes the apple out of the box
and puts it into a nearby blue box. The first person then comes and
searches for the apple in the red box. Very small children do not
understand why the person sought for the apple in the red box, even
though it was not there. They don't have the personality pattern, so
they don't realize what does it mean for the person to be unaware of
the apple having been put into a different place.
4I. Practical pattern: Functionality triumphs identity
If a person has a sense of identity, knowing what assets and goals are
particular to him, he can proceed to be practical about his
undertakings. He can make expectations of the consequences of his
actions and the actions of others.
---
Something like this is needed if the MOQ is to explain Cartesian
dualism. But with normative patterns, the idealistic patterns do not
only make the MOQ explain Cartesian dualism. They also explain what
the physicalistic and idealistic world have in common with each other.
Namely, that both ontologies are instances of the same patterns. They
just have one different axiomatic belief, which is, that in Pirsig's
patterns, entities are fundamentally physical, but in idealistic
patterns, entities are fundamentally mental.
You can't explain Cartesian dualism with a theory that has physical
existence as a fundamental ontological category. The whole point of
Cartesian dualism is that there are two fundamentally irreducible
ontological categories. Neither one is a derivative of the other.
If we have normative patterns, and we derive physicalistic and
idealistic patterns of them separately, neither one is derivable from
the other, but they both are derivable from the same source.
> Hopefully as you continue to present your point-of-view it wll
> become bstter understood.
Nice to hear that, it sounds positive. :)
-Tuukka
Quoting MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>:
> Tuukka,
>
> Unfortunately, I do not understand what you are presenting. I do
> not have a familiarity with the terms as you are using them. I
> understand we all might find different aspects of the MoQ important,
> and may approach that interest from different points-of-view.
> Broadly, I tend to want to consider a pattern from a position of its
> opposite. That allows for the widest range of possibilities for
> individual instances and the most dynamic point-of-view. But that's
> just my opinion. Bottomline, for me, is that Reality =
> Experience(patterned experience/unpatterned experience). I think
> to categorize patterns into the four-level, evolutionary,
> hierarchical structure: inorganic, biological, social and
> intellectual is brilliant, rational, modern, and suggests a way to
> bridge Western science with Eastern wisdom. But this is only my own
> perspective.
>
> But that's enough of me repeating my point-of-view once again, to
> the point of ad nauseam some would say. Hopefully as you continue
> to present your point-of-view it wll become bstter understood.
>
>
> Marsha
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Dec 22, 2011, at 9:10 AM, Tuukka Virtaperko
> <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
>
>> Marsha,
>>
>> I agree. I'd say Pirsig's patterns are descriptive abstractions of
>> conventional-habitual experience.
>>
>> I also think that conventional-habitual experience is the same as
>> romantic quality.
>>
>> But because Pirsig's patterns are an analogy of
>> conventional-habitual experience, I think they do not include
>> normative things such as formal logic and axiomatic mathematics. To
>> be sure, such formal constructs may be derived from Pirsig's
>> patterns, but once that has been done, they are inherently
>> independent of experience.
>>
>> In other words, I believe it's possible to construct a normative
>> set of patterns which is an analogy of Pirsig's patterns, but not
>> the same thing.
>>
>> 1. The fundamental normative pattern is the /existence pattern/. It
>> contains all existing entities, such as symbols and their basic
>> relations.
>> 2. From the existence pattern emerges the /increment pattern/. This
>> pattern includes all existing structures that can have duplicates or
>> iterations. It contains variables and coefficients.
>> 3. From the increment pattern emerges the /interaction pattern/. That
>> pattern includes all rules regarding what kind of increments are
>> possible and what are not. It contains functions and topology.
>> 4. From the interaction pattern emerges the /control pattern/, which
>> contains rules on what can be stated of interactions and what can
>> not be stated. It contains things like axiomatization and completeness.
>>
>>
>> -Tuukka
>>
>>
>>
>> 22.12.2011 13:29, MarshaV kirjoitti:
>>> Hi Mark,
>>>
>>> I see patterns, of which words and definitions are an aspect, to
>>> all be analogy for conventional-habitual experience.
>>>
>>>
>>> Marsha
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> On Dec 21, 2011, at 11:40 PM, 118<ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Marsha,
>>>> OK I see how you are using analogy. I would use the word
>>>> symbolism. There, there was no complaint there, I must be
>>>> improving my attitude. Thanks for pointing it out.
>>>>
>>>> Sent laboriously from an iPhone,
>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>> On Dec 20, 2011, at 11:05 PM, MarshaV<valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Dec 21, 2011, at 1:19 AM, 118<ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Marsha,
>>>>>> I am not griping, I am just talking. Settle down, I am not out to get
>>>>>> you. My only point was that non-duality is a word which we give the
>>>>>> idea that there is no "other".
>>>>> And I don't think you're out to get me, you just tend towards complaint.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> An analogy is when we represent something with a similar thing.
>>>>>> Something that is hard to describe is presented as something that is
>>>>>> similar.
>>>>>
>>>>> I used 'nonduality' as similar to a type of experience. But
>>>>> explanation, too, with its use of signs and symbols (words) is
>>>>> the use of analogies all the way down.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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