To Jeremy:
From: Platt
In Roger’s summary of the pros and cons of the “atoms are aware”
discussion, he wrote:
The PRO's say that atoms must be aware or the whole MOQ falls apart.
The CON's think they need to make a case as well as explain why
Pirsig never seemed to share this logical dependency. To my
knowledge no case was ever made.
The case has been made but perhaps not clearly enough. Here’s how
it goes.
The MOQ’s basic structure is evolutionary morality. The inorganic level
evolved into the biological, the biological into social, the social into
intellectual. To fail to account for that evolutionary structure (how it
came about) in MOQ terms means the MOQ falls apart, i.e., no
structure.
Pirsig raises the essential question about that evolutionary structure
which the CON’s have (as yet) failed to answer:
“Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to
organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?
If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough
the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small
amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind
of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we
can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor.
Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable
compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay
irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a
scientific fact.
“The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on
earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the
sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be
something else. What is it?” (Lila, Chap. 11)
Pirsig’s answer, of course, is contained in the rest of Chapter 11 where
he traces the beginnings of the biological level as 'the organized
disobedience of the law of gravity' and 'the migration of static patterns
toward Dynamic Quality,' explaining that 'natural selection is Dynamic
Quality at work.'”
And in direct answer to the question, “Why . . . into a professor of
chemistry?” asked above, Pirsig writes:
“The reason atoms become chemistry professors has got to be that
something in nature does not like laws of chemical equilibrium or the
law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics or any other law that
restricts the molecule’s freedom They only go along with laws of any
kind because they have to, preferring an existence that does not follow
any laws whatsoever.”
ATOMS PREFER AN EXISTENCE . . . meaning 1) they know some
things are better than others, 2) they possess the ability to value, and
3) they experience (are aware).
The entire MOQ rests of the assumption that reality is Quality and
Quality is experience. Thus, reality as described in the MOQ is of
necessity experiential from protons to people.
It seems to me that to reject or refute the “atoms are aware” thesis the
CONS must answer 1) why evolution occurred, 2) how a reality
dependent on experience as posited in the MOQ can evolve from non-
experiencing beings, 3) how awareness (the ability to experience)
emerged from no awareness and 4) at what evolutionary stage did
experiencing beings appear.
This challenge has yet to be met by anyone on the CON side. If their
answer is the scientific one, “it all just happened by chance,” we will
know they disagree with the MOQ. That’s fine, but let’s put it out there
on the table. Did evolution occur the way Pirsig says it did? Or as
Elephant might put it, “Is Pirsig’s story an accurate reflection of what
happened?”
IMO, Jeremy, that’s the issue.
Platt
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