[MD] What am I doing here?

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Ian,
by speaking of a generalized "you" I spoke to the spirit of this forum 
that makes people express their support to me privately rather than 
publicly, on this forum. By doing so they could be doing me a favor. I 
don't want to get thrown out like Bo because my ideas were too popular. 
But there could be some problem with the spirit of this forum if 
advocacy of new ideas is best kept secret.

About attribution, then. On 1.1.2012 at 16:22 (UTC +2) I have written a 
message, where I attribute the circular model to Matt, but I couldn't 
find the message in which Matt presents the suggestion. You seem to 
present a somewhat similar idea on 23.12.2011 at 10:57 (UTC +2):

"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"




Matt also said, on 23.12.2011 at 20:58 (UTC +2), that:

"

If I followed your critical argument correctly, then you were
suggesting that Pirsig needed to "develop a parallel system of
patterns that would be idealistic" to offset his isolated attention to the
classic picture of the universe furnished by an ascending line from
physics to evolutionary biology to X (a placeholder for whatever it is
that furnishes a picture of the social and intellectual).

I think that is, more or less, right.  Pirsig was lopsided in this respect,
because what he needs alongside a picture of the universe that
develops from the Big Bang to life on Earth in the Year of Our Lord
Savior Jesus Christ 2011 (a "variant of emergent physicalism") is a
picture of the development of those vocabularies that allow us to
state that picture (a "parallel system of patterns that would be
idealistic").  This would be the balancing of, as Dan might put it,
materialism and idealism.  (And so people don't become confused,
these are special uses of "materialism" and especially "idealism,"
but I think we need a special sense of "idealism" to try and come to
grips with Pirsig's notion of the idea, or intellectual pattern, coming
before matter.)

However, that being said, my point in suggesting that your criticism of
Pirsig is defused by Pirsig because, in the MoQ, it is a mistake to say
that an "assumption that existence is fundamentally inorganic" is at
work, is that I think you are wrong to think that "saying that
something is Quality doesn't mean much" in the MoQ.  True, it
doesn't explain anything about the patterns themselves when we
reach that level, but it precisely causes the assumption you stated to
be invalid_because it is_  "an informative metaphysical statement" by
telling us "what context we are thinking in."  That context, as I put it,
is the context in which everything is already understood to be
normative, and so follow the rules of the normative.

The_implications_  of that metaphysical stance, I think, are left
underdeveloped (or at least, there is a lot of room for further growth
in understanding how deep that stance penetrates and what
implications it should and should not cause to our thinking).  One
implication is a balance between two systems, as you put it.  But
Pirsig 1) does provide the conceptual resources for understanding
this to be the case and 2) does show cognizance of the need for the
two systems by virtue of the other philosophical work he performs in
ZMM and Lila.  ZMM, after all, is the genealogical unearthing of the
line of thought on the_idealist_  side of the equation that produces
SOM's_reductive_  emergent physicalism.  This is paralleled in Lila
by his discourse, for example, on anthropology.  The true
lopsidedness of Pirsig's extant philosophical work, perhaps, is that on
the idealist side, the side that deals with the history of humanity's
attempts to develop ideas, it is mostly_deconstructive_, whereas on
the materialist side, the side that deals with the nature of reality, it is
both deconstructive and constructive (the deconstructive bits are his
arguments against taking certain philosophical positions and the
constructive bits are his metaphysical system-building).

The special senses of "idealism" and "materialism" should be more
fully apparent now.  For if one uses a typical definition, it does
appear that I've just suggested that the system of the Metaphysics of
Quality, the "side that deals with the nature of reality," is materialist.
But that's not the conceptual position of "materialism": so defined
here,_every_  philosophical system should, for comprehensiveness,
have an idealist side and a materialist side, and the materialist side
defines the_material_  of reality.  Descartes has two, res cogitans
and res extensa (mind and matter).  Pirsig has one: Quality.  The
material of reality in the MoQ is Quality, which means that it is
normative, which means that it blocks attempts to reduce the
normative to the non-normative ("reductive emergent physicalism")
by finding underneath_everything_  the normative.  _What this
means_ needs to be further explained, yes; but the conceptual
apparatus is already in place to block the inference that the MoQ
assumes that "existence is fundamentally inorganic."




If I understand correctly, this argument says the inorganic level is not 
the "fundamental category" of the MOQ, because, for example, static 
quality is definitely more fundamental. I was not being clear about what 
I meant with fundamental. Yet I do not find the MOQ to truly include a 
form of idealism because of the argument Matt presents here. The MOQ 
includes two somewhat separate theories: one of them is a general theory 
of emergence, with the static value patterns. Another one is more like a 
traditional metaphysical categorization, in which there are static, 
Dynamic, classic and romantic forms of quality. In the latter theory, 
Pirsig presents arguments that the static emerges from the Dynamic, but 
the Dynamic also somehow has to latch to static quality, which means 
that opportunities for the manifestation of Dynamic Quality emerge from 
certain configurations of static quality. Likewise, classic and romantic 
quality emerge from each other. This gives rise to an important 
difference between the general theory of emergence portion of the MOQ 
and the traditional metaphysical portion of the MOQ. The latter cannot 
be used as a general theory of emergence, because it does not define 
metaphysical categories in which we could not only say what emergence 
is, but also what it is not.

Therefore, the notion of emergence is largely irrelevant in the 
traditional metaphysical portion of the MOQ. That portion of the MOQ 
features no category pair which could not be argued to emerge from the 
other. Only the theory of levels of static value does so. For example, 
we may not argue that the biological level emerges straight from the 
social, that is, that the emergence would go backwards.

This is why I don't find it satisfactory to say that the MOQ includes 
idealism in the traditional metaphysical portion, and materialism in the 
general theory of emergence portion. In order to include idealism in 
such a way that mental constructs can be compared to materialistic 
constructs, the constructs have to be defined within the same theory. 
This means they should also be expressed as levels of static value. The 
traditional metaphysical portion of the MOQ resembles, to some extent, a 
metatheory of the general theory of emerge portion of the MOQ, and those 
metatheoretic entities cannot be contrasted with the object level 
entities of the general theory of emergence.

Furthermore, when I included both materialism and idealism to the object 
level theory (the general theory of emergence), that inclusion cannot be 
contrasted with having materialism in the general theory of emergence, 
and idealism in the metaphysical theory. I presented the inclusion 
*within* the object-level theory, and the inclusion could not possibly 
retain a similar meaning if somehow "transported" or "expanded" to the 
metatheory level. I don't think the metatheory is idealistic or 
materialistic. In Pirsig's lingo, the metatheory is about Quality, and I 
have no problem with that. The object level theory is about static 
quality. The difference is quite clear.

When I said that the MOQ should include both materialism and idealism, I 
meant it should include them as static quality. What Matt seems to be 
saying there is that it includes them as Quality. That probably makes 
some sense, but I want to express both material and mental objects 
within a general theory of emergence, and Matt's way of seeing things 
here does not facilitate that. Surely he is not saying that there are 
five levels, like this: static, inorganic, biological, social, intellectual.

Tuukka