Hi Roger, Jonathan, Marco, Marty, Elephant, all:
PLATT(previously to Roger)
My guess is that such sentences are too metaphorically strong for your
liking and thus present a false picture. Instead of “awareness” would
you accept Whitehead’s much less provocative word “prehension” to
describe a particle’s response to an observation or an atom’s
sensitivity to its environment?
ROG:
Sure. No problem.
PLATT:
If Roger had posted this response early on, much of the ensuing
argument over “aware” might have been avoided. “Prehension” is
defined in my dictionary as “apprehension by the senses,” and
“apprehension” is defined as “the act or power of perceiving or
comprehending.” Atoms perceive? OK by me.
ROG:
To stay clean, I would stick with ‘values’ or ‘value patterns’ and I would
avoid any of the above three terms (awareness, choice, sense).
PLATT:
“Atoms value” is also OK—“to value” meaning “to consider or rate
highly” Likewise, “atoms prefer, meaning “to like better or best.” (The
quotation marks around “prefer” cited by Elephant as meaning that
Pirsig really didn’t mean it is a red herring. Pirsig uses “prefer” without
quotation marks several times when talking about an atom’s
characteristics. Ex: “Phaedrus thought this ambiguity of carbon’s
bonding PREFERENCES was the situation the weak Dynamic forces
needed. Lila, Chap. 11, emphasis added.)
JONATHAN:
Electrons are au courant.
PLATT:
I like it.
MARTY:
Consciousness should not be thought of as self awareness, but can
be seen as the ability to move towards quality, to ‘recognize’ the quality
route. . . . Consciousness . . . is the context in which everything exists.
Atoms, like everything else, operate within that context and behave
accordingly.
PLATT
Atoms “recognize the quality route.” Yes.
MARCO:
We are the experience of DQ. And atoms, as well, are the inorganic
experience of DQ.
PLATT
Atoms “experience” DQ. Good.
MARCO:
So, what does it mean to be aware? IMOE (in My Own English) it’s ‘to
well know how to do” without the need of external guidance.
“And what is good, Phaedrus
And what is not good.
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
This, IMO, the Q-awareness.
PLATT:
Atoms “have Q-awareness” i.e., they have “inner knowledge” of what’s
good without the need of external guidance. I agree.
A comment by Anthony McWatt in his paper in the Forum may help to
put all this in perspective:
“i.e. preference is seen as being on a continuum rather than suddenly
manifesting itself at the human level. In the MOQ, the higher up the
evolutionary ladder you go (from sub-atomic particles to people) the
more freedom you have in making preferences. This is why generally a
person’s experience will be that much richer and complex than a dog’s
while the dog’s experience will be that much better than a tree’s which
will be better than a piece of rock’s and so on.”
So when I say “atoms are aware,” I’m talking about a very low level of
awareness. Similarly, atoms don’t experience all that we or even
viruses do. On the continuum McWatt speaks of, atoms have very
limited experience indeed.
Perhaps Jonathan’s “au courant” gets this idea across as well as
anything suggested so far, though I’d prefer an English phrase. Maybe
there are other expressions we can use that ascribe value-sensitivity to
atoms without, like Frankenstein, bringing them to life to Roger’s
horror. As far as I know, the English language doesn’t have a word for
a barely experienced experience. Suggestions welcome.
Platt
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