[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Dan Glover]

Hey Tukka,

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Tuukka Virtaperko
<mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
> All,
> I'm back, and I have results to offer you. Today I participated to a cocoa
> ceremony. During the ceremony we went to a pier where a woman played the
> guitar and we sang. At that moment I realized the guitar is an inorganic
> pattern whose value is the same as the value of the calming and beautiful
> song. But when the woman stopped playing the guitar ceased to have this
> value.
>
> An inorganic pattern has instrumental value when a biological pattern uses
> it to actualize a choice it has made. Obviously, this doesn't mean the
> guitar should be discarded after the song is over. Forgetting the guitar on
> the pier and and thus exposing it to the elements would've been a bad
> choice. But as far as we are concerned of quality, the guitar inherently has
> none. The reason for bringing it back in and taking care of it lies in the
> value of songs we'll play in the future, but preparing for the future this
> way is an intellectual pattern. It doesn't mean the guitar would inherently
> have quality.
>
> Biological patterns accumulate value according to the choices they make.
> This is because biological patterns may have volition, which makes it
> possible to attribute the value of a choice to the pattern that made the
> choice. This value is inherent to the biological pattern in the sense that
> it stays with the biological pattern even after the choice has already been
> made.
>
> Social patterns can be modeled as the power set of biological patterns.
> Suppose we have persons A, B and C, which compose the set {A,B,C}. The power
> set of this set is {{A,B,C},{A,B},{B,C},{A,C},{A},{B},{C},{}}. In other
> words, the power set of a set includes all subsets of that set (and,
> technically, the empty set {}). Each subset of the power set that has more
> than one member is a social pattern whose value is the sum of the value of
> its members. Social patterns, too, could be said to have volition but this
> volition manifests via biological patterns.
>
> Whenever a biological pattern makes a choice, the justification of that
> choice accumulates the same value as what is the value of that choice to all
> that are affected by it. This justification is an intellectual pattern.
>
> The merit of this model is that it provides a clear answer to a question
> Pirsig answered only vaguely and with some difficulty and uncertainty in his
> letter to Paul Turner. That letter is, first and foremost, about defining
> the intellectual level. Pirsig writes that although the ancient Egyptians
> had intellect, their culture was not an intellectual one. This can be
> expressed more analytically as follows.
>
> The justification of any choice made by a biological pattern is an
> intellectual pattern in the sense that it accumulates value as the
> biological pattern makes said choice. That is to say, any such justification
> is intellectual with regards to how it accumulates value. But we can say
> that a pattern that is intellectual with regards to value accumulation is
> anyhow metaphysically biological if it only takes biological values into
> account. If it only takes social values, at most, into account, it is
> metaphysically a social pattern. These are *improper* intellectual patterns.
> A *proper* intellectual pattern takes intellectual values into account. It
> can do so by including statements about other intellectual patterns that are
> either proper or improper.
>
> The difference between proper and improper intellectual patterns manifests
> via the abstract symbol manipulation Pirsig mentions in his letter. Let's
> suppose two hungry people, Steve and Jane, and a banana. Steve and Jane are
> biological patterns and if they only take their biological values into
> consideration it would, simplistically, mean that each one of them thinks:
> "I should get the banana" in which "I" is a biological pattern. Therefore
> this intellectual pattern would be an improper one.
>
> Friends of Steve would want Steve to get the banana whereas friends of Jane
> would want Jane to get it, but this would only take social values into
> account. Therefore such judgements made by friends are also improper
> intellectual patterns.
>
> A proper intellectual pattern in this situation could be something like:
> "The one who is hungrier should get the banana". In this pattern, "the one
> who is hungrier" is neither a biological nor a social pattern. It's a
> variable, as the hungrier one could as well be Steve or Jane. This is why it
> makes the justification properly intellectual. And variables are denoted by
> abstract symbols.
>
> When we define the model like this, the social level necessarily accumulates
> more value than the biological level, and the intellectual level (including
> both proper and improper intellectual patterns) necessarily accumulates more
> value than the social level, just like Pirsig would have it. To be sure,
> Pirsig would probably say that the higher levels "have" more value, not that
> they "accumulate" more value, but this model anyhow explains what kind of a
> process leads to such an outcome.
>
> This model does not verify the hypothesis that *any* higher-level pattern is
> more valuable than *any* lower-level pattern. It's not clear to me whether
> Pirsig thinks this way, but I got the impression that he might. I don't
> think this is a tenable assumption. Let's suppose a medical study, according
> to which a certain drug is safe with regards to certain risks, but the drug
> has some other very harmful side-effect the study did not take into account.
> If the drug is deemed safe because of such a study, the assumption of its
> safety is an intellectual pattern, but the choice of making the drug
> available for consumers is not valuable but has a negative value.
>
> In his letter Pirsig also mentions that the argument that the Metaphysics of
> Quality is not an intellectual formulation is not clear to him. Within the
> model I have presented, the Metaphysics of Quality can be used as
> justification for making a choice and is in this sense an intellectual
> pattern among others.
>
> Regards,
> Tuk
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