[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Dan Glover]

Wow. What happened? Did that send? Guess I sorta lost my knack for
this. Anyhow, Once more with gusto...

Hey Tukka!

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 1:00 AM, Dan Glover <daneglover at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Dan:
So I remember reading this speech by Leonard Cohen which you can find here:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/leonardcohenhowigotmysong.htm

And he says some thiings which might contradict the notion that a
guitar is simply an inorganic pattern in that it the guitar is
actually a living thing and I think he has a point, one that any
musician can appreciate. Anyway...

>>
>> 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.

Dan:

No but see the guitar does have value! Even if I were to agree with
you, which I don't, that the guitar is only an inorganic pattern, it
is a pattern of VALUE! See what I think you are doing is mistaking a
thing as having quality instead of it the thing being 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.

Dan:
Do you really believe biological patterns have volition? I can't see
it. Biological patterns are constrained into a specific set of
parameters which disable them, the biological patterns, from going
outside those parameters. So really the volition or choice that
biological patterns 'have' isn't that so much as being had by the
quality that both surrounds them, the biological patterns, and
permeates them, simultaneously making it seem as if free will exists,
which of course it does, but only seem to. So in essence this tends to
render your argument null and void if one follows said reasoning above
to its logical conclusion.

>>
>> 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.

Dan:

Well and yes of course the MOQ is a collection of intellectual
patterns of value. What else could it be? Any argument to the contrary
is a bit ludicrous. Not that I am saying you are doing that here. I
have always thought that intellectual patterns are ideas. I know
somewhere in Lila's Child Robert Pirsig equates them, intellectual
patterns, to mind. Or maybe he is talking about the intellectual
level. Either way, since intellectual patterns as ideas are not
physical entities existing at large in the world for all to see, any
medical study, or any study, for that matter, isn't concerned so much
with the physical properties of the world as they are with the idea of
physical properties.

So,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com