[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Dan Glover]

And I meant that with 2 u's, btw. Just so you know. :-)

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 1:23 AM, Dan Glover <daneglover at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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



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