[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

Dan Glover daneglover at gmail.com
Fri Jul 15 19:41:12 PDT 2016


Tuukka,

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 3:50 AM, Tuukka Virtaperko
<mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
> Dan, Adrie, all,
>
> thanks for that one, Adrie. I'll be careful!
>
> My previous post was about things I've already thought through but now I'll
> switch to a more tentative (and potentially more creative) mode of
> discussion.
>
>
>> 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...
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> What wouldn't be a living thing? Would you consider the sun to be dead?
> Althought I don't know, I suppose you mightn't.

Dan:
I see the sun is a living thing just as the Earth. The inorganic
patterns making up the sun are the molecules, however, just as are the
inorganic patterns making up the guitar, and us, are molecules.
Whether or not they are alive, the molecules, is open to debate,
though for the sake of clarity it seems best to use DNA as the basis
for biological patterns.

>
> The guitar isn't inorganic when Leonard Cohen inhales the fragrance of its
> living wood. But that life is given to the wood by Cohen himself.
>
> The notion of inorganicity may seem paradoxical since we as observers of
> inorganic patterns are anyhow biological patterns and can perform the act of
> observing an inorganic pattern only by making it a part of our cognition,
> thus turning it alive.

Dan:
The wood is living. It contains DNA. That life isn't 'given' to it,
the wood, by Leonard Cohen or by anyone.

>
> When Cohen inhales the fragrance of his guitar's living wood the guitar
> serves him as an instrument of self-reflection. He doesn't play the strings
> but the guitar plays his mind, reminding him of the day he bought it.
>
> We may call inorganic patterns inorganic to emphasize the fact that they can
> so easily be separated from what makes them alive.
>
> Fingernails are biological patterns but fingernail clippings aren't. The
> difference isn't about something one can observe by putting a fingernail
> under a microscope. It's about the fact that even though the clippings don't
> come with us as we go we assume that they remain in existence after being
> discarded. That we remain able to perceive them even if we wouldn't use them
> for anything and even if they didn't remind us of anything.

Dan:
Fingernail clippings ARE biological patterns. They contain DNA. The
molecules making up the fingernail clippings are inorganic patterns.

>
> A pacemaker isn't a biological pattern when it's sitting on the table but
> it's a biological pattern when in use.

Dan:
No. A pacemaker has never been alive. It does not now nor will it ever
contain DNA.

>
> We have the notion of inorganic pattern for referring to things that could
> serve as extensions of many different biological patterns. When we were at
> the pier the guitar was an extension of the woman playing it but had someone
> else played it afterwards the guitar would've turned into an extension of
> that other person. That doesn't mean the woman who played the guitar
> would've also turned into that other person's extension. Only the guitar
> changes with regards to whose extension it is.

Dan:
I think this tends to confuse the issue. Extensions.

>
>
>>
>>>> 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.
>
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> I am not claiming that the guitar is only an inorganic pattern. I am merely
> emphasizing the inorganic aspect of the guitar in order to illustrate a
> metaphysical point. The guitar, as the extension of a guitar player, is also
> biological.

Dan:
But if we begin extending values like this, aren't we destroying the
power of the MOQ?

>
> I wrote that "as far as we're concerned of quality, the guitar inherently
> has none". These are kind of meaningless words as Buddhist philosophy
> doesn't introduce essences, that is, things that would inherently have
> value.
>
> By saying that I just tried to express that since the guitar doesn't make
> decisions, attributing value to it doesn't change its behavior, whereas
> attributing value to a person might change that person's self-image and thus
> behavior. I suppose, perhaps mistakenly, that we don't need to take an
> animistic viewpoint in this discussion, unless that is what you want.
>
> I also suppose, perhaps equally mistakenly, that we don't subscribe to
> essentialism. You indeed seem to be suggesting the guitar essentially has
> value, but the question is, what do you intend to do with that value apart
> from using it to disagree with my previous post?

Dan:
Not exactly. No, I am not saying the guitar essentially has value. I
am saying that is not the proper way to approach the question Value,
or quality, has the guitar. Remember how Rigel asks: Does Lila have
quality? And the answer Phaedrus came up with was yes. But as he
considered things, he realized how quality has Lila, and how Rigel's
question was based on the faulty assumption that patterns have quality
rather than patterns are quality.

>
> The model I'm presenting here doesn't contradict physics, but it's a model
> of value, not a model of atoms and molecules. The guitar consists of atoms
> and molecules, which are value, but people don't perceive them, just the
> guitar, so the atoms and molecules are intellectual patterns. Do you feel
> the need to use these intellectual patterns to disagree with my previous
> post?
>
> It isn't clear to me what you mean by suggesting I mistake a thing having
> quality to a thing being quality. Everything is quality, so the notion of
> "everything is quality" doesn't help in analysis, which basically means
> splitting a whole into smaller parts. You can't split a whole into smaller
> parts according to an attribute that is shared by every single part. You
> know this, and I know the MOQ is more than analysis. But I don't see any
> other way to solve the problems Pirsig mentions in the Turner letter except
> analysis.

Dan:
What I am attempting to do here is lay the groundwork, so to speak,
for further exploration into the MOQ. For instance, you said the
guitar has no quality as it, the guitar, does not make decisions. You
might say the same thing about a head of lettuce. The head of lettuce
has no quality because it just sits there making no decisions. Quality
is only imbued to lettuce when someone eats it just as quality is only
imbued to the guitar when someone plays it.

So when I say I think you're confusing having quality with being
Quality, what I am trying to say is that the guitar doesn't have
quality so much as it is Quality. See, if we start with a faulty
assumption, then we are forced into falling back onto the notion that
since everything is quality we cannot analyze it. Quality. Sort of a
ZMM assumption. In a way. But that is exactly what the MOQ is all
about. Analyzing quality. And in a sense you are right. We can never
completely analyze Quality. The process goes on and on.

>
>
>>
>>>> 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.
>
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> I might understand the concept of volition in a much more mundane sense as
> what you're aiming at. I understand volition simply as something like, if a
> rock is about to roll off a cliff and hit someone, the rock will not stop if
> you tell it that rolling off the cliff would have bad consequences. But if a
> person were about to push that rock off the cliff he might stop if you told
> him there's someone down below. Of course this kind of "volition" is an
> illusion, it's just an illusion that happens to be helpful.
>
> Frankly, I can't parse the sentence: "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."

Dan:
Yeah, I can understand the difficulty here. Sometimes sentences get
away from me and I have to whip them back into shape. What I seem to
be saying is that 'having' volition is something like 'having'
quality, that free will exists, just as biological patterns have
quality. But as you say, that is only an illusion. Free will only
seems to exist just as we only seem to have quality.

>
>
>
>
>>
>>>> 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.
>
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> I agree.

Dan:
Good. This is a good beginning.

Thank you,
Dan

http://www.danglover.com



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