[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Dan Glover]

Tuukka, all,

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 8:12 AM, Tuukka Virtaperko
<mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net> wrote:
> Dan,
>
>
>
>
>>
>>> Anyway, the above Pirsig quote inspires me to modify the model.
>>> Unfortunately my attempt to do so produced a jungle of hypotheses that
>>> has
>>> been too complicated to understand so far. I spent the last day in that
>>> jungle and this day, too, and haven't come up with a complete solution. I
>>> won't be home for the weekend so I won't have time to think this through
>>> soon, if that's even possible. Maybe I should break down as a list what I
>>> have so far.
>>>
>>> Tentative value and pattern definition: Firstly, let us define "value" as
>>> something that's either inorganic, biological, social or intellectual,
>>> and
>>> "pattern" as a data object that may have an inorganic, biological, social
>>> and intellectual attribute. Values are not patterns and patterns are not
>>> values. In the context of programming we also want to say that variables
>>> have values or that functions return values, but these are "improper
>>> values". "Proper values" are either inorganic, biological, social or
>>> intellectual.
>>
>> Dan:
>> You are making this harder than it has to be.
>
>
> Tuukka:
> Possibly, if talking is what you want to do. But not so if it's programming.
> There would've been alternatives I seriously considered. One interesting
> alternative was one in which each value was also a pattern. But it didn't
> seem to make sense.

Dan:
I write. That's what I do. In a sense, I program living beings. Not
computers. I don't know how to program computers in order to talk to
other living beings. Other humans. So I write these words.

>
>>
>>> Tentative biological pattern definition: The biological value of a
>>> biological pattern is the sum of the decisions it has been affected by,
>>> including its own decisions. Lila is biologically fine because she's a
>>> sexually confident woman.
>>
>> Dan:
>> No, she's not. Lila is growing older and she understands how she will
>> soon lose whatever it was that once attracted men to her.
>
>
> Tuukka:
> Ah, but of course. However, Pirsig literally writes that "biologically,
> she's fine".

Dan:
Well, not to be pedantic, but Phaedrus is the one who muses that Lila
is okay, biologically. And you gotta cut him a little slack, right? I
mean, he did just sleep with her. Lila. And I hope he used protection.
You know, because, well, Lila gets around and you don't wanna wake up
in a week or two with a nasty rash and wonder... but, yeah, so it is
all a fictional story, though. Lila. A metaphysics wrapped in a cloak
of fiction. And is Lila really fine, biologically? As fine as a
fictional character can be, I suppose. Biologically, that is.

>
>>
>>> The social value of a biological pattern is the
>>> sum of how its decisions have affected everyone, including itself. Lila
>>> is
>>> pretty far down the scale because she breaks marriages. Its intellectual
>>> value is determined as the value of justifications it can express. Lila
>>> is
>>> nonexistent as she can't express intellectual things.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Now you sound like Rigel.
>
>
> Tuukka:
> Dang, I can't believe I fell into that Victorian thinking pattern. I just
> tried to find some reason why Pirsig wrote that socially, Lila's pretty far
> down the scale. But I guess that has more to do with not having a steady
> job, being some sort of a vagabond and so on. I don't remember getting a
> clear impression of who is Lila socially.

Dan:
Lila is a whore. Lila drifts around looking for a sugar daddy. Someone
to take care of her. She gets off one boat and onto another. The Karma
to the Arete. What does that say? The Captain looks down on her. He
treats her like a subject to study. Sure, he doesn't mind having sex
with Lila but he isn't ever gonna take her home to meet mother. The
Captain uses Lila just like Lila uses him. And in the end, they both
get what they really want.

>>>
>>>> is also
>>>> biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every
>>>> intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are
>>>> intellectual. Handshaking, ballroom dancing, raising one's right hand
>>>> to take an oath, tipping one's hat to the ladies, saying "Gesundheit
>>>> !" after a sneeze-there are trillions of social customs that have no
>>>> intellectual component. Intellectuality occurs when these customs as
>>>> well as biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
>>>> that stands for them and these signs are manipulated independently of
>>>> the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can then be defined very
>>>> loosely as the level of independently manipulable signs. Grammar,
>>>> logic and mathematics can be described as the rules of this sign
>>>> manipulation."
>>>>
>>>> Dan comments:
>>>> I think this paragraph answers your questions about guitars and
>>>> clothes and how they can be strictly inorganic patterns or inorganic
>>>> and biological patterns simultaneously depending upon the origins of
>>>> materials used to construct said patterns. Also it shows how social
>>>> and intellectual patterns, although discrete systems in their own
>>>> right, cannot exist without the underlying inorganic and biological
>>>> patterns that uphold them. In essence, when we walk out of a room, it
>>>> cannot be said to exist or to not exist. The room. The story ends. And
>>>> yeah, then we can perhaps walk back into the room and reassure
>>>> ourselves that it does indeed exist. The room. Or not. If something
>>>> has occurred in our absence to destroy the room.
>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> The room will keep existing in our memory, just like hairs are
>>> categorized
>>> as biological in our minds even though we haven't tested the hairs we
>>> encounter for DNA.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Whether the room exists in memory or not has nothing to do with saying
>> the room exists or not. Map and territory.
>
>
> Tuukka:
> Remind me why we're talking about this?

Dan:
It has to do with underlying value levels. But feel free to drop it.

>
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>> Maybe, if an inorganic pattern accumulates value as the extension of
>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>> biological pattern, it simply retains the value.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Come to think of it, even in my current model the inorganic level can
>>>>>>> have
>>>>>>> more value than the biological if the biological level has negative
>>>>>>> value
>>>>>>> and a biological pattern uses an inorganic pattern to do something
>>>>>>> good.
>>>>>>> Perhaps I have to measure value here so that it never has negative
>>>>>>> value.
>>>>>>> Yeah, that would seem to work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> If there is no negative value, then what impetus drives progress and
>>>>>> evolution?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>
>>>>> What I meant is that we have to measure value without negative values
>>>>> in
>>>>> this context because of the following problem:
>>>>>
>>>>> Suppose a biological pattern Jane of a value of -5 playing a guitar of
>>>>> 0
>>>>> value so that 3 units of value are accumulated. In this case the
>>>>> biological
>>>>> level would have a value of -2 whereas the inorganic level would have a
>>>>> value of 3. This makes the pattern language contradict Pirsig because
>>>>> Pirsig
>>>>> says the biological level has more value than the inorganic level.
>>>>>
>>>>> We can resolve the contradiction in the following way:
>>>>>
>>>>> Negative value and positive value accumulate as biological patterns
>>>>> make
>>>>> choices. However, we have to store the negative and positive value to
>>>>> different variables. If we sum these variables, we get the relative
>>>>> value
>>>>> of
>>>>> the pattern. The aforementioned problem features relative values.
>>>>> However,
>>>>> if we sum the absolute values of these variables, we get the absolute
>>>>> value
>>>>> of the pattern, which would be 3 for the guitar and 7 for Jane. When
>>>>> Pirsig
>>>>> writes that the biological level has more quality than the inorganic
>>>>> level
>>>>> he means that it has more absolute value.
>>>>>
>>>>> Relative value drives progress and evolution.
>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> The way I understand it, there are no absolute values in the MOQ. You
>>>> seem to be arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making
>>>> assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see!
>>>> Here is a contradiction.
>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> That's exactly what I'm doing because I'm developing a pattern language
>>> and
>>> I don't want the pattern language to contradict Pirsig. My goal is a
>>> system
>>> in which I can't do "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then
>>> making
>>> assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see!
>>> Here
>>> is a contradiction." And it seems to me I just reached that goal
>>> regarding
>>> negative values by introducing the notion of absolute value.
>>>
>>> If you don't like the notion of absolute value, the goal apparently can
>>> also
>>> be reached with a MOQ that has no negative value. Looks like you want a
>>> MOQ
>>> with negative value but without absolute value. And I'm curious how
>>> you're
>>> going to get that, because I don't know how to do that without leaving
>>> room
>>> for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and then making assumptions
>>> on
>>> those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying, see! Here is a
>>> contradiction."
>>>
>>> I think there's a name for "arbitrarily assigning value to patterns and
>>> then
>>> making assumptions on those values arbitrarily assigned and then saying,
>>> see! Here is a contradiction". The name is "reductio ad absurdum".
>>
>> Dan:
>> And so remind me again why we are talking?
>
>
> Tuukka:
> We're talking about this because you argued that there are no absolute
> values in the MOQ. The most likely explanation for your stance is you're
> using the Two Truths Doctrine
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine) to formulate the
> distinction between the relative and the absolute. But I don't mean absolute
> value in that sense. I mean absolute value in the mathematical sense. That
> is, the absolute value of x is |x|. These are all "relative truths" in the
> Buddhist sense.

Dan:
Actually, my stance on absolutes comes from Lila. For example:

"... if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one
doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest
quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if
the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can
then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings
in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the
"real" painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value.
There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we can
perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is,
in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values."
[Robert Pirsig]

"Science superseded old religious forms, not because what it says is
more true in any absolute sense (whatever that is), but because what
it says is more Dynamic." [Robert Pirsig]

Dan comments:
So yeah he seems to be saying there are no absolutes in the MOQ. At
least not in any absolute sense. Although, yes, he does go on a bit
about some of his ideas being absolutely true like the doctor
preferring a patient over a germ but I get the impression he is using
the term absolute more in a literary sense than in an absolute sense.
If that makes sense.

>.
>
>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> Yeah, well I'm a pensioner so I have all day for this.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Ah. So the negative quality that tends to drive me, namely, the need
>> to earn a living, is absent with your life, though, of course, perhaps
>> it's debatable whether or not it is really negative quality, the need
>> to work every day. Some people, like me, enjoy it. The working. Even
>> though I'd rather not be doing it. The working. If I had my druthers,
>> that is. Which I don't. And maybe that's where the conundrum exists.
>> Interesting. I often wonder if I would be nearly as productive if I
>> wasn't driven the way I am. Instead my habit of working and writing
>> every single day, I might instead be tempted to take a day off now and
>> again. And that now and again might indeed grow into the habit of not
>> writing and not working every day. I'm just not sure.
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> Work's a duty I thought to fulfill. Since Pirsig made academic philosophy
> seem like a waste of time I thought to become a machinist. Or a welder. I
> really liked welding although I didn't want to do that for a living. And the
> teacher said I was the best technical drawer he's ever had. I completed the
> assignments faster than my classmates and had nothing to do for most of the
> time. But a guy on our class thought I don't fit in and I had nothing to
> prove so one day I walked away for good.
>
> I'd be able to work a little. But I can't make much money or I'll lose my
> pension. Work isn't a kind of a "let's see what you can do" thing for a
> Finnish pensioner. It's a "let's see what the welfare state allows you to
> do" kind of thing. Since working feels like concession to begin with, having
> to beg to make that concession turns the whole affair so repulsive I don't
> want to have anything to do with it.

Dan:
Yes, in a sense, working is a concession. I do enough to get by. To
keep the lights turned on and the internet connected. A roof over my
head is nice too. A decent car to drive. Not new, but decent. At least
it rolls down the road when I step on the gas pedal. My car. But yeah,
part of working is compromising the freedom I might otherwise enjoy,
which ruffles my feathers. But then again, when I ask myself what I'd
be doing if I didn't go into work and had no money to live the life to
which I've grown accustomed, well, it doesn't seem so bad. Working.

>
> Not having to go to work gave me time to work on the MOQ but it also
> isolated me. My home is my work place. I have a hard time relaxing here. I'm
> anxious right now. I'm alone under the authority of a demanding superego
> that used to require me to work all the time and is having a hard time not
> burning myself out. But even my work doesn't progress if I can't relax or
> have fun. I'm not organized enough to meditate regularly. I need something
> intense to direct my attention away from work stuff and then, when I relax,
> the answers to my questions pop out of nowhere. But all that intense stuff
> costs money.

Dan:
Yes, I think in a sense that work is cathartic. At least for me. Not
that I work all that hard when I am working. But when the day is over
and I am home, well, then I can begin my real work. My writing. Which
wouldn't be able to progress as smoothly if I wasn't working, Yeah,
I'd be too wrapped up in wondering if when I get up tomorrow that my
electric will be off and then I'd have to either try and borrow money
from friends or family to settle my account and get it reconnected, my
electric, or do without. Electricity. Which would basically suck since
I wouldn't be able to use this computer to write. And yeah sure I can
revert to caveman days and pull out a notebook and pencil and write
that way, but no, my mind would be too unsettled.

>
> I've spent more than I earn for years and one day I mightn't be able to do
> that anymore. Mentally, I cringe when I think of that day. My first reaction
> to the idea is that that's a day when I'll kill myself. But suicide doesn't
> really feel like my cup of tea. Suicide sucks because the one who dies that
> way tends to disgrace the things he stood for. Petri Walli was an ingenious
> Finnish rock musician who killed himself, and someone wrote that with him
> died the modern hippie dream.
>
> The near-impossibility of suicide makes me afraid of ending up living
> without wanting to live. I'm so bad at living that if I'm hungry I might
> just ignore it instead of eating. Pirsig wrote he lives out of habit but my
> habits suck. I'm too high-strung to be able to go for a walk in the park. I
> smoke because that's so addictive it's easy to do. And when I don't have
> cigarettes I go to my ashtray and roll my own from what's left in the butts
> there. At least those butts don't cost money.

Dan:
I have what I guess they might call an addictive personality. Yeah, I
smoked for years. Did a bit of drinking. Well, actually a lot of
drinking. Several years ago I took up running. Miles and miles and
miles. The smoking and drinking stopped. Just like that. It isn't that
I like running. But now I am hooked on it. Running. I run at night on
account of it being cooler. That and no one can see me. Ha! Anyhow, I
was in the hospital not long ago and of course I couldn't run. While I
was in the hospital or when I got out. At least not for a couple
months. So now I'm basically starting all over again. Running. Not as
much as I used to run. But I'm getting there. Obsessively, you could
say. Same way with my writing. I'm getting back to it. Not quite there
yet, but I'm getting there. Obsessively. But yeah, habits... they can
go both ways, in doing things detrimental to the body and doing things
good for the body.

>
> I have lots of respect for Robert Pirsig. He managed to have a job in
> addition to writing. I don't feel like I'm very good at writing. I used to
> be better but I kind of lost focus. I can still get good ideas but I express
> them when they're not finished because I've been at this for over a decade
> and this never seems to get finished anyway, although I wished that it
> would. But if this got finished now I don't know what else I'd do, so it
> doesn't matter.

Dan:
When I wrote my first book, I could never finish it to my proper
satisfaction. I went ahead and wrote another one anyhow. And I could
never finish that one either. Properly. And so on and so forth. And on
and on it goes. It just seems as if when I go back to them, my books,
which I do from time to time, I can always make them better. I tell
myself, dude, just write one book. One really great book. And so
that's what I am working on at the moment. Some nights I think I might
even have something. Something if not great at least good. Other
nights, it all seems like junk. But I keep on. Mostly because I don't
know what to do if I stop. Writing.

>
> I feel hard but brittle, like glass. And I want to feel young and supple.
> I've been trying to figure out what's wrong. Maybe I should live more
> communally so that the presence of other people would help in grounding me.
> It sure looks like I'm turning into some kind of a hippie anyway. There's
> life in that direction, life that isn't expensive. Unconditional love
> intrigues me because that's the antithesis of how I lived when my
> productivity was the measure of my worth. It's not peace and love I'm
> usually thinking about but I'd like to.

Dan:
Yeah, I'm with you there. I think about maybe selling the homestead
here. It once belonged to my grandparents and when they died it went
to their kids and now they're all dead and so the place kind of fell
to me. I guess no one else wanted it. I think about selling out and
moving south or maybe west. Not north. Winter is coming and it is cold
enough here. So yeah, either south or west. Maybe sell out and move to
the west coast. Buy a little place and grow really good marijuana and
go down to the farmers' market every Sunday and trade my stuff for
other things I need. Like money. Or move to Florida and buy me a place
on the ocean and go beach-combing every morning. The whole free love
thing's sorta passed me by, though. At least that's the impression I
get. Most women my age, well, they're looking for someone to take care
of them. And that ain't me.

>
> I wish I had a girlfriend.

Dan:
I'm sort of glad I don't have one. A girlfriend. At least most of the
time. But still, yeah, it does get lonely at times. Not often, but
sometimes. Holidays, mostly. You know, Christmas. Thanksgiving. Of
course you probably don't have Thanksgiving there. Lucky you.

>
>
>>
>>>> So why do I care? I care on account of the possibility that those
>>>> words I saw on the ceiling in that hospital room really did mean
>>>> something. That those words are inside me, somewhere, waiting to be
>>>> born. And maybe these words right here are part of them. Those words I
>>>> saw but couldn't quite read. Or maybe this is all just a bunch of
>>>> silly shite and none of it means a thing. Either way, caring seems
>>>> better than not caring.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>>>> But isn't that so for the universe in general? When the story stops,
>>>>>>>> so does the universe.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>>>> Yeah. Quality is modeled by the mind, and the mind is biological.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan:
>>>>>> Ideas come first. Then comes the biological mind.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tuukka:
>>>>> What do you mean? Intellectual patterns come first? In a temporal sense
>>>>> or
>>>>> in a priority order? Do you mean that the biological mind is an idea?
>>>>
>>>> Dan:
>>>> What else can it be but an idea?
>>>
>>>
>>> Tuukka:
>>>
>>> It can be the source of an idea. Pirsig writes biological patterns are
>>> the
>>> source of intellectual patterns.
>>
>> Dan:
>> Could you offer a quote where he, Robert Pirsig, says this?
>
>
> Sure. Chapter 13 of LILA.
>
> "When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of individual
> criminals, the issue becomes more complex.  In the case of treason or
> insurrection or war a criminal's threat to a society can be very real.  But
> if an established social structure is not seriously threatened by a
> criminal, then an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral
> justification for killing him.
>
> What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a biological
> organism.

Dan:
Ah! But doesn't this contradict what you said? That biological
patterns are the source of intellectual patterns? See, he says
specifically that the criminal is NOT JUST a biological organism. And
he goes on...

> He is not even just a defective unit of society. Whenever you
> kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too.  A human being
> is a collection of ideas

Dan:
See, a human being is a collection of ideas, not simply a biological pattern.

> and these ideas take moral precedence over a
> society.  Ideas are patterns of value.  They are at a higher level of
> evolution than social patterns of value.  Just as it is more moral for a
> doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is more moral for an idea to
> kill a society than it is for a society to kill an idea."

Dan:
When we see someone walking down the street, we see the inorganic and
biological patterns, the physical characteristics that make up human
beings. What we don't see, however, are the ideas that hold them
together. The someone we see walking down the street. And those ideas
we cannot see are at a higher level of evolution than are the patterns
we see. And so then we have this:

"Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They
originate out of society, which originates out of biology which
originates out of inorganic nature." [Lila]

Dan comments:
So according to the MOQ, that collection of ideas that composes a
human being, they don't come from the biological brain. They originate
in social patterns.

>
>
>>
>> I noticed these bits in Lila that might or might not pertain:
>>
>> "You made a statement in your book that everyone knows and agrees to
>> what 'Quality' is. Obviously everyone does not! You refused to define
>> 'Quality,' thus preventing any argument on the subject. You tell us
>> that 'dialecticians' who debate these matters are scoundrels. I guess
>> that would include lawyers too. That's pretty good. You carefully tie
>> your critics' hands and feet so that they cannot give you any
>> opposition, tar their reputations for good measure, and then you say,
>> 'Okay, come on out and fight.' Very brave. Very brave."
>>
>> "May I come out and fight?" the author said. "My exact statement was
>> that people do disagree as to what Quality is, but their disagreement
>> is only on the objects in which they think Quality inheres."
>>
>> "What's the difference?"
>>
>> "Quality, on which there is complete agreement, is a universal source
>> of things. The objects about which people disagree are merely
>> transitory. " [Lila, discussion between Rigel and Phaedrus]
>>
>> ",,, with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical experience is not an
>> experience of "objects." It's an experience of value patterns produced
>> by a number of sources, not just inorganic patterns." [Lila, Robert
>> Pirsig]
>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> The later quote reminds me of the age-old story of a Westerner going to
> Japan and hearing that a certain temple is thousand or so years old. But the
> temple is made of wood, so the Japanese have to rebuild it once in one or
> two centuries, and the Westerner concludes that the temple is not the same
> as it was a thousand years ago because the planks (inorganic patterns) have
> been changed.
>
> Anyway, the discussion we're having here - at least this part of it - seems
> to be about whether biological patterns are intellectual or intellectual
> patterns biological. I don't know how we could speak of "emergence" if
> intellectual patterns weren't biological in the sense of emerging from
> biological patterns.

Dan:
We are missing an important element here. I don't think it is proper
to say intellectual patterns emerge from biological patterns.
Intellectual patterns emerge from, or come after, social patterns, at
least according to the MOQ:

"First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of
biological life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes
that established the supremacy of the social order over biological
life­ conventional morals- proscriptions against drugs, murder,
adultery, theft and the like. Third, there were moral codes that
established the supremacy of the intellectual order over the social
order-democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the
press. Finally there's a fourth Dynamic morality which isn't a code.
He supposed you could call it a "code of Art" or something like that,
but art is usually thought of as such a frill that that title
undercuts its importance. The morality of the brujo in Zuni-that was
Dynamic morality." [Lila]

> But you seem to keep going about the admittedly factual
> fact that the notion of biological pattern is an intellectual one. I agree
> about that but I dare say that individual biological patterns are not
> necessarily intellectual. That is to say, they can be perceived without
> proper intellect.

Dan:
Well, proper intellect doesn't occur in a vacuum. It springs from
social patterns.

Thank you,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com