[MD] The first cut.

[MarshaV]

Hi dmb,

On Jan 20, 2012, at 4:28 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> dmb says:  
> Marsha wants us to Checkout footnote [53]: "Literally ‘illusion’ but only in the sense that it is illusory to believe that people and the objects of their world are permanent, independent and unchanging." Presumably to defend the idea, as Ian put it, "that static patterns are themselves ever changing dynamically". 
> 
> dmb says:
> Apparently, Marsha thinks this is a dilemma with two mutually exclusive options: unchanging or ever-changing. But it's not a dilemma and static patterns are neither of those things. 
> This isn't even a metaphysical dispute. Marsha is using contradictory TERMS. Her sentences are nonsense, and this charge doesn't have to be based on anything more than standard dictionary definitions, common sense usage, etc.. If we say something is "static", then "ever-changing" is pretty much exactly what we do NOT mean to say. 
> 
> To say that patterns of quality are static is NOT to say they are unchanging, eternal or permanent. It simply means they are stable, as in Pirsig's "static latching" metaphor. Dynamic innovation can't be preserved without this stabilizing factor. It's an essential feature of the evolutionary process at every level. Our ideas and our world grows this way. Latch, grow, latch, grow, latch, grow, latch. You could almost dance to it.


The transition from grow to latch to grow to latch to grow to latch is change.  In my definition the stabilizing factor is clearly stated in the statement:  "that pragmatically tend to persist and change within a stable, predictable pattern".  


Marsha 



Static patterns of value are processes, conditionally co-dependent, impermanent, ever-changing and conceptualized, that pragmatically tend to persist and change within a stable, predictable pattern.  Within the MoQ, these patterns are morally categorized into a four-level, evolutionary, hierarchical structure:  inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. Static quality exists in stable patterns relative to other patterns:  patterns depend upon innumerable causes and conditions (patterns), depend upon parts and the collection of parts (patterns), depend upon conceptual designation (patterns). Patterns have no independent, inherent existence.  Further, these patterns pragmatically exist relative to an individual's static pattern of life history.