[MD] Idealistic static value patterns

Fri Dec 23 00:57:48 PST 2011

Interesting Tuukka,

Since "information" is the root of physics - the availability of
something that can be patterned (or unpatterned) - I have no problem
with that. One reason I've always rejected the idea that physics has a
materialist base (except by convention).

Similarly inorganic / organic split is confounded by our conventional
material world view. To me inorganic just means not living - patterns
that are unable to replicate and perpetuate themselves against the
slide back to entropy. Memetic, genetic - makes no difference what the
"material" is - so long as it's patternable information - hence no
need for any mind-material type of duality.

Your picture is pretty much where I've been, so I'll need to
understand Matt's comment.

Ian

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 2:20 AM,  <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
> 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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