Hi Tuukka,

Thanks for the reminder of Matt's comment - I'd forgotten - I admitted
at the time I hadn't yet understood it (I never have enough time to
follow-up all the avenues here). Two points

(1) I'm pretty sure Matt was not suggesting those 5 levels - the
quality outside (and pervading) the 4 levels is unpatterned - DQ in
other words. The Inorganic level of SPV's is not "fundamental" - just
the first division of static patterns emerging from the unpatterned
background - Northrop's undifferentiated aesthetic continuum.

(2) Bo's view was not "popular" - just a vocal and entirely
"defensive" few (but then he was under attack). The defense never had
anything to do with the arguments, and Bo sadly never listened to any
arguments - just hurled around abuse like "acolytes" at anyone trying
to engage in debate. He had (still has) a point, but he would never
allow anyone who cared to elaborate how "we" solve it. (that's an
inclusive we - him included).

I'm still very concerned (primarily concerned) with the evolution of
our future "intellects" beyond SOMism. The rest of the MoQ is history
- literally. (By the way - note the scare quotes - if people want to
reserve the word intellect for something narrower, then I'm OK with
that - I just mean "good use of our human faculties" - which is where
we all came in - what is good ?

People mustn't confuse the quality of debate with the volume of the
participation.
As before, bye and take care, but stay in touch.
Ian

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Tuukka Virtaperko
<mail@tuuk...> wrote:
> Ian,
> by speaking of a generalized "you" I spoke to the spirit of this forum that
> makes people express their support to me privately rather than publicly, on
> this forum. By doing so they could be doing me a favor. I don't want to get
> thrown out like Bo because my ideas were too popular. But there could be
> some problem with the spirit of this forum if advocacy of new ideas is best
> kept secret.
>
> About attribution, then. On 1.1.2012 at 16:22 (UTC +2) I have written a
> message, where I attribute the circular model to Matt, but I couldn't find
> the message in which Matt presents the suggestion. You seem to present a
> somewhat similar idea on 23.12.2011 at 10:57 (UTC +2):
>
> "Interesting Tuukka,
>
> Since "information" is the root of physics - the availability of
> something that can be patterned (or unpatterned) - I have no problem
> with that. One reason I've always rejected the idea that physics has a
> materialist base (except by convention).
>
> Similarly inorganic / organic split is confounded by our conventional
> material world view. To me inorganic just means not living - patterns
> that are unable to replicate and perpetuate themselves against the
> slide back to entropy. Memetic, genetic - makes no difference what the
> "material" is - so long as it's patternable information - hence no
> need for any mind-material type of duality.
>
> Your picture is pretty much where I've been, so I'll need to
> understand Matt's comment.
>
> Ian"
>
>
>
>
> Matt also said, on 23.12.2011 at 20:58 (UTC +2), that:
>
> "
>
> If I followed your critical argument correctly, then you were
> suggesting that Pirsig needed to "develop a parallel system of
> patterns that would be idealistic" to offset his isolated attention to the
> classic picture of the universe furnished by an ascending line from
> physics to evolutionary biology to X (a placeholder for whatever it is
> that furnishes a picture of the social and intellectual).
>
> I think that is, more or less, right.  Pirsig was lopsided in this respect,
> because what he needs alongside a picture of the universe that
> develops from the Big Bang to life on Earth in the Year of Our Lord
> Savior Jesus Christ 2011 (a "variant of emergent physicalism") is a
> picture of the development of those vocabularies that allow us to
> state that picture (a "parallel system of patterns that would be
> idealistic").  This would be the balancing of, as Dan might put it,
> materialism and idealism.  (And so people don't become confused,
> these are special uses of "materialism" and especially "idealism,"
> but I think we need a special sense of "idealism" to try and come to
> grips with Pirsig's notion of the idea, or intellectual pattern, coming
> before matter.)
>
> However, that being said, my point in suggesting that your criticism of
> Pirsig is defused by Pirsig because, in the MoQ, it is a mistake to say
> that an "assumption that existence is fundamentally inorganic" is at
> work, is that I think you are wrong to think that "saying that
> something is Quality doesn't mean much" in the MoQ.  True, it
> doesn't explain anything about the patterns themselves when we
> reach that level, but it precisely causes the assumption you stated to
> be invalid_because it is_  "an informative metaphysical statement" by
> telling us "what context we are thinking in."  That context, as I put it,
> is the context in which everything is already understood to be
> normative, and so follow the rules of the normative.
>
> The_implications_  of that metaphysical stance, I think, are left
> underdeveloped (or at least, there is a lot of room for further growth
> in understanding how deep that stance penetrates and what
> implications it should and should not cause to our thinking).  One
> implication is a balance between two systems, as you put it.  But
> Pirsig 1) does provide the conceptual resources for understanding
> this to be the case and 2) does show cognizance of the need for the
> two systems by virtue of the other philosophical work he performs in
> ZMM and Lila.  ZMM, after all, is the genealogical unearthing of the
> line of thought on the_idealist_  side of the equation that produces
> SOM's_reductive_  emergent physicalism.  This is paralleled in Lila
> by his discourse, for example, on anthropology.  The true
> lopsidedness of Pirsig's extant philosophical work, perhaps, is that on
> the idealist side, the side that deals with the history of humanity's
> attempts to develop ideas, it is mostly_deconstructive_, whereas on
> the materialist side, the side that deals with the nature of reality, it is
> both deconstructive and constructive (the deconstructive bits are his
> arguments against taking certain philosophical positions and the
> constructive bits are his metaphysical system-building).
>
> The special senses of "idealism" and "materialism" should be more
> fully apparent now.  For if one uses a typical definition, it does
> appear that I've just suggested that the system of the Metaphysics of
> Quality, the "side that deals with the nature of reality," is materialist.
> But that's not the conceptual position of "materialism": so defined
> here,_every_  philosophical system should, for comprehensiveness,
> have an idealist side and a materialist side, and the materialist side
> defines the_material_  of reality.  Descartes has two, res cogitans
> and res extensa (mind and matter).  Pirsig has one: Quality.  The
> material of reality in the MoQ is Quality, which means that it is
> normative, which means that it blocks attempts to reduce the
> normative to the non-normative ("reductive emergent physicalism")
> by finding underneath_everything_  the normative.  _What this
> means_ needs to be further explained, yes; but the conceptual
> apparatus is already in place to block the inference that the MoQ
> assumes that "existence is fundamentally inorganic."
>
>
>
>
> If I understand correctly, this argument says the inorganic level is not the
> "fundamental category" of the MOQ, because, for example, static quality is
> definitely more fundamental. I was not being clear about what I meant with
> fundamental. Yet I do not find the MOQ to truly include a form of idealism
> because of the argument Matt presents here. The MOQ includes two somewhat
> separate theories: one of them is a general theory of emergence, with the
> static value patterns. Another one is more like a traditional metaphysical
> categorization, in which there are static, Dynamic, classic and romantic
> forms of quality. In the latter theory, Pirsig presents arguments that the
> static emerges from the Dynamic, but the Dynamic also somehow has to latch
> to static quality, which means that opportunities for the manifestation of
> Dynamic Quality emerge from certain configurations of static quality.
> Likewise, classic and romantic quality emerge from each other. This gives
> rise to an important difference between the general theory of emergence
> portion of the MOQ and the traditional metaphysical portion of the MOQ. The
> latter cannot be used as a general theory of emergence, because it does not
> define metaphysical categories in which we could not only say what emergence
> is, but also what it is not.
>
> Therefore, the notion of emergence is largely irrelevant in the traditional
> metaphysical portion of the MOQ. That portion of the MOQ features no
> category pair which could not be argued to emerge from the other. Only the
> theory of levels of static value does so. For example, we may not argue that
> the biological level emerges straight from the social, that is, that the
> emergence would go backwards.
>
> This is why I don't find it satisfactory to say that the MOQ includes
> idealism in the traditional metaphysical portion, and materialism in the
> general theory of emergence portion. In order to include idealism in such a
> way that mental constructs can be compared to materialistic constructs, the
> constructs have to be defined within the same theory. This means they should
> also be expressed as levels of static value. The traditional metaphysical
> portion of the MOQ resembles, to some extent, a metatheory of the general
> theory of emerge portion of the MOQ, and those metatheoretic entities cannot
> be contrasted with the object level entities of the general theory of
> emergence.
>
> Furthermore, when I included both materialism and idealism to the object
> level theory (the general theory of emergence), that inclusion cannot be
> contrasted with having materialism in the general theory of emergence, and
> idealism in the metaphysical theory. I presented the inclusion *within* the
> object-level theory, and the inclusion could not possibly retain a similar
> meaning if somehow "transported" or "expanded" to the metatheory level. I
> don't think the metatheory is idealistic or materialistic. In Pirsig's
> lingo, the metatheory is about Quality, and I have no problem with that. The
> object level theory is about static quality. The difference is quite clear.
>
> When I said that the MOQ should include both materialism and idealism, I
> meant it should include them as static quality. What Matt seems to be saying
> there is that it includes them as Quality. That probably makes some sense,
> but I want to express both material and mental objects within a general
> theory of emergence, and Matt's way of seeing things here does not
> facilitate that. Surely he is not saying that there are five levels, like
> this: static, inorganic, biological, social, intellectual.
>
>
> Tuukka
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