[MD] On Pirsig's letter to Paul Turner

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Dan, all,


>>>>> 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.

Tuukka:
I don't want to drop it. I just still don't know what's your point. 
First it's about rooms disappearing when we're not looking at them and 
now it's about underlying value levels. These two topics seem to have 
little to do with each other.

>
>>
>>>>>>>> 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:

Pirsig is deriving the notion of absolute/ultimate things from the Two 
Truths Doctrine. But he also writes:

"We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom 
for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses 
biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good."

This absoluteness is not the Two Truths Doctrine absoluteness but 
absoluteness within the theory of static value patterns, which in and of 
itself is provisional according to Pirsig. When I speak of absolute 
value in the mathematical sense I refer to a similarly provisional 
notion - a notion that is absolute only within the context of mathematics.

It's just an unfortunate coincidence that the mathematical notion of 
"absolute value" has such a name. It could've been named something else 
as well.

>
>> .
>>
>>>> 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.

Tuukka:
I have a friend who tried to "live like me". He quit because he didn't 
get enough ideas. I know perhaps two people who "live like me". But 
their paths are different than mine.

>> 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.

Tuukka:
I bought an e-cigarette. It's cheap to smoke and less harmful. And I 
resumed antidepressants and ADHD-medication. Took a hike yesterday, too.

>
>> 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.

Tuukka:
Wouldn't we all just like to write something perfect and then retire.

>
>> 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.

Tuukka:
Marijuana not being legal in Finland makes me so mad I think a couple of 
visits to the psych ward could've been avoided by the legalization of 
mind-altering substances.

>
>> 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.

Tuukka:
I kind of regret that sentence I wrote. It makes me sound lonelier than 
I really am.

>
>>
>>>>> 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...

Tuukka:
No. I didn't make the asinine claim that a criminal is just a biological 
organism.

>
>> 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.

Tuukka:
Why don't you tell that to Lila. I know it already.

>
>> 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.

Tuukka:
Well, Pirsig just wrote that a human being is a source of thought. What 
is, according to you, the relationship between biological and 
intellectual patterns? Is there any?

>
>>
>>> 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]

Tuukka:

Intellectual patterns don't emerge from biological patterns, but rely on 
*all* the levels below - not just the social level. The biological 
patterns merely execute intellectual and social patterns because those 
patterns can't do anything by themselves.

This debate got started when I wrote that the mind is biological. But I 
didn't write that the mind isn't social or that the mind isn't 
intellectual. You sound like you think I meant to write that. But I didn't.

Thank you,
Tuk