The Eudaimonic MoQ

Paper from April 2003 by Sam Norton, concerning an alternative interpretation of the “intellectual level” in Pirsig’s MoQ. I only skim-read it previously, and because I didn’t “get it” I’ve been unable to participate in some of Sam’s debates. So here goes … (this is a long one) …

The standard model – Sam describes the standard view of the MoQ in his own words. Only a couple of quibbles. Inorganic Level – Sam admits to being no physicist, so let’s not worry about errors of popular science detail – let’s just agree to call it the “Physical” level (the level where only physics prevails – in its widest sense). Similarly the Biological Level – a few quibbles on where physics and chemistry become biology and life. Let’s agree to think of this as the “Living” level, where life prevails over mere physics.

First actual disagreement. Sam says this is the layer where “natural selection” occurs. No, I say that exists in all the levels and is one of the major mechanisms of evolution throughout the MoQ.

Second actual disagreement. Sam says only humans participate in the “Social Level”. Not sure why we need to make such a constraint. Clearly a lot of social patterns in other animals may be purely biological evolved instinctual social behaviours, but I have no doubt other intelligent species can and do use inter-individual communication – language of sorts – in their own lifetimes to organise social patterns too. (But “inteligence” is part of the subject under discussion here, so let’s hang fire.)

In the Social Level Sam also talks, as does Pirsig, about the celebrity principle, setting and spreading cultural standards. My only quibble would be to update this with the concept of “memes”.

In the Intellectual Level, Sam re-iterates Pirsig’s idea that this is distinguished by “symbolic manipulation of information” and by the idea of “truth over opinion” and quickly goes on to point out what he sees as failings with the intelectual level, the subject of the essay.

OK – just to put my stake in the ground – I see the intellectual level as the advent of “formalised reason” – “scientific thought” – this is the lowest layer of the top level. The start of the whole problem. The idea of truth and right being derivable from concepts and axioms, as distinct from what social and below had just been “better” for those involved. So what I’m looking out for is the meta-problem. Is Sam saying the world model for “reason” is wrong or that the MoQ statement of it is not a good one ? If the former – I’m right with him, as is Pirsig’s MoQ of course, that’s its point.

A second stake in the ground – I’ve never actually seen the Intellectual as totally distinct from the Social. I see a socio-politico-intellecto-cultural continuum, with many different static latches, not just one clear social vs intellectual demarcation. The definition of “intellect” is a cultural issue. I prefer one Cultural level. There is a level at which the formal intellectual gets added to the social, but it never displaces it, just adds to it. I think we’re going to be debating which kinds of reason are higher quality – “intellect” is a crude approximation. The intellectual Quality level is going to need a definition that involves “Quality” as part of it, or else it is going to get hooked on the very defintions of “reason” it aims to supplant. This is Godel. This is the meta-problem. The “top” level in any MoQ may always have to have this cosmic bootstrap problem.

Reading on.

Sam expresses concerns 1 to 5. Clearly I share something like them. (Let’s just ignore further popular science quibbles about biological life, evolution and DNA, being irrelevant to the point.) Basically the Intellectual Level is badly defined – either absolutely or distinct from the social – intellectual is certainly not the best word for it

So Sam “Eudaimonia” is your alternative to “Intellect” as the fourth level ?

Sam suggests “The autonomous individual” as the esence of the fourth level. No, that’s not it. Though Sam re-defines autonomous. Not just free to act but free to rationlise / reason how to act. This is looking promising. Its the communicable formalisation of reason – beggining to look like memes to me.

Sam says “My society says that this is good, but is my society right to say so? – in other words, there is a questioning of social values.” Spot on. In the social level value are right because they are social, in the intellectual (or whatever) they are right because the reason can be formalised independent of the social acceptance. Super-social-reason.

The middle third of the essay is a pre-and post-Socratic history of the of judgement of individuals independent from their social roles. So what are those units of judging, units of choosing ? (Interestingly the Chalmers stuff I’m still reading, has a big play on “judgement” in terms of what can be known – but I digress.)

Aha, it’s happiness – Sam says Eudaimonia is human flourishing or happiness. I say, or Satori or Quality. This is beginning to crystallise – the top level of the MoQ is highet level of quality itself, where quality is defined by the MoQ, dynamic quality. MoQ is its own grandpa. This strange-loopy recursiveness is very attractive (to me). Maximising happiness is also very “pragmatic”.

Sam goes on to highlight artistic, aethetic quality that is not amenable to “logical” analysis. This is not new or contentious.

Sam says “I consider intellect (in the Western sense) to be something of an anti-DQ death-force, precisely because it seeks a ‘closed’ and formal understanding.” I say I wish I’d written that first. Spot on. This is Godel / Hofstadter again.

Sam concludes (before pre-loading ammunition for his critics)
[Quote] Again, I think this is something that Pirsig himself articulates in ZMM, not least when he discovers the Sophists properly, and their teaching that ‘man is the measure of all things’, and Pirsig writes, “Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! not ethical relativism. Not pristine ‘virtue’. But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along.” Rhetoric – the development of the capacity to discern quality – is the pre-eminent technique for developing autonomous individuals. It seems fitting for this to be the most notable characteristic of the fourth level. [Unquote]

Sam, I think I agree. Not sure re-naming the fourth level Eudaimonia helps enlighten. We should just re-label it with any existing name for the highest quality – you list plenty. Quality or Dynamic Quality or MoQ itself, and damn the recursion.

Alternatively, let’s just maintain the “Intellectual” label for the fourth level, but make sure we have a clear definition that this is what MoQ means by intellectual. Least resistance line to the right conclusion, no ? MoQ is the highest intellectual pattern. (So much ongoing discussion misses this meta-problem of discussing the MoQ within the MoQ – this would expose that beautifully.)

Wot, still no god ? 😉

It’s All Connected

Browsing Ray Girvan’s Apothecary’s Drawer – Wave Related – fairly slow blog rate due to his “estivation” (summer equivalent of hibernation mainly in cold blooded creatures) – attracted by the Mexican philosopher Manuel DeLanda.

[Quote] DeLanda is a contemporary Mexican philosopher with a strong interest in the scientific and cultural crossover: “topics as diverse as warfare, linguistics, economics, evolution, chaos theory, self-organizing matter, nonlinear dynamics, artificial life and intelligence, the internet and architecture, amongst many others” (including solitons). [Unquote]
[Annotated Bibliography] [Interview] & [DeLanda Destratified]

Then noticed his previous thread on one-off waves or bores, linking back to controversial boxing day tsunami pictures, and existing pictures of previous bores. (A hundred links to browse in that lot.)

The connectedness – non-periodic waves, strange loops etc and mexican anthroplogical backgrounds to Northrop and Pirsig et al. Clear as mud ?

Manuel DeLanda [Quote] If you read the essays by the first guy who saw spontaneously oscillating chemical reactions, you find out he was unable to publish his essays. This was in the 50’s, not long ago. The idea that orderly behavior could arise spontaneously from matter was so counter-intuitive.. At that time, the only two ways they could see stable things arising in nature was through rational perfection — the best possible outcome — or heat-death. What nonlinear science brings about is a complete new range of structurally stable forms of behavior, which has absolutely nothing to do with rationality or the heat-death of entropy. Now attractors are appearing all over the place. We’ve discovered a whole new reservoir of forms of stabilization. It’s a paradigm warp. [Unquote]

Scepticism is too powerful – “nothing to do with rationality” – scarily true.

Manuel DeLanda [Quote] As they say, they key word here is not wisdom, but caution. You don’t know what happens at bifurcations. You have absolutely no control. The smallest fluctuation can make things go wrong. The predictive power of humans and technology is nil near bifurcations. All you can do is approach carefully, because the last thing you want to do is get swallowed up by a chaotic attractor that’s too huge in phase space. As Deleuze says, “Always keep a piece of fresh land with you at all times.” Always keep a little spot where you can go back to sleep after a day of destratification. Always keep a small piece of territory, otherwise you’ll go nuts. [Unquote]

Dynamic Quality is lost without the latches of static quality.

Oh wow … DeLanda is lecturing ” .. about a shift of paradigm in the postmodern world – the old, analytic way is replaced by new, synthetic one .. ” A man after mine own. Someone to take a serious interest in methinks.

[Post Note – for Mitch – Australian Apostle collapses into the sea. Could it be a sign ? No, stop it, you’re getting silly.]

Stick With It Google Books

Remember debating all the copyright custodianship issues about Google’s plan to create an on-line the content of all the great libraries in the world, at least a year ago, if not two.

Still think it’s an inspired idea, that must succeed; the amount of knowledge made available would be just mind boggling.

So many books would see the light of day, that would otherwise languish in a handful of largely hidden volumes. If anything the proportion of old texts that might benefit from new sales in printed (or electronic) form, would actually more likely be promoted by their on-line presence. (See legal music downloads story). For those older books with little prospect of sale ever again in print, the libraries themselves lose any commercial benefit from the cost of their custodianship, then this implies some fee needs to be paid somewhere, but surely the numbers add up easily from a very small Google subscription, if needed, and Google are investing millions in it anyway. Who needs to lose at all from this enormous benefit.

The copyright blockages must be temporary. See Google’s own blog here.

Promoting Science

Always had mixed views about “The Edge”, John Brockman’s collection of the scientific elite as their publishing agent. Here is Technology, Entertainment and Design 2005 conference report, focussing on a comparison between Richard Foreman’s “Pancake People” and George Dyson’s “Godel to Google Net” (Which I think I blogged before).

Anyway whilst the science writing is always good and mixed, inlcuding plenty I believe and plenty I don’t, I was always a bit put off by the “hype”. However, seeing the recent shameless promotion of the Intelligent Design Creationism garbage, and the terrifying way it’s lapped up by an ill-informed popular press, and worse still, ill-informed education planners and school governors, I think science and any good quality intellectual thought needs all the promotion it can get.

More power to you John Brockman.

Smart People Make Bad Decisions

Thanks to Denise for this paper at ChangeThis. Has a summary of a number of group behaviour issues.

As Denise points out Seth Godin’s blog looks interesting too. You know this guy Johnnie (Moore) ?

Evolving Religion ?

Whilst the Christian / biblical tradition seems determined to degenerate backwards to ancient dogmas, witness the contagious spread of Intelligent Design Creationism meme from Bush’s mouth to the mainstream press here in Western Australia, and (god forbid) the science classrooms of future generations, one beacon is the suggestion from Salman Rushdie that the Qu’ran could benefit from positive evolution – a reformation – from the 7th century to the 21st.

It would be far from ironic, if the more oriental continued to lead the occidental. Go for it Islam, listen to your thinkers, you know it makes sense.

Intellectual may be a dirty word in some circles, but it really is the only thing that can save us from crude socio-cultural “democracy” – popular survival of the most-convenient, lowest-quality common-denominator, memes.

(That is of course what the Pirsigian Metaphysics of Quality would say too.)

[Post Note : My god, it gets worse. Full page “advertorial” in the West Australian positively promotiong IDC, and a DVD explaining the origins of life from some “missionary crusade” pastor, obviously a great source of disinterested knowledge on the subject. Wake up and smell the corruption of future generations. Criminal as I said, to give this stuff any credibility on a par with anything remotely scientific.]

The Tail Really Does Wag The Dog

Work In Progress – Interesting series of columns by the BBC’s Peter Day, charting very rapid market disruptions, mainly by new technologies, Google, Blogging and Podcasting, and also by the Chinese economy and Banking competition. The old 80 year Kondratiev economic cycles are being severely strained everywhere.

It really is spotting the market effect of the technology, rather than the capabilities of the technolgy per se. The Excite / Google / Amazon example says it all. It used to be millions of customers in dozens of markets, now it’s millions of markets each with dozens of customers – the so-called long tail.

Still haven’t got into podcasting, transmitting or receiving, but it looks unstoppable as the coming media. Leon reminded me of that this morning with this link to the first pod-cast from space. Good luck with the re-entry guys.

I’ve Started So I’ll Finish

Still Reading David Chalmers’ “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory” after blogging about the intro earlier.

It’s quite tough technically, as well as tough in terms of credibility. His appeals to logical possibility in his thought experiments stretch “conceivability” (and I never was very good with pure thought experiments, in the absence of physics); you can’t help feeling the problems might be inherent in the logical premises, rather than any conclusions that follow. However, to give him his due, he appreciates this and spends a good deal of space addressing every possible objection and doubt, every which way he can think of. Tedious, and I almost gave up, but I’m glad I didn’t.

His most famous thought experiment is his Zombie Twin, a variation on earlier Twin Earth ideas (watery stuff vs H2O, has “essential” connotations). In this case you are asked to accept the “logical possibility” of having a Zombie twin of yourself on a physically identical twin earth where the only difference is that the Zombie has no “subjective aspect to its consciousness” yet all its behaviours, decisions and responses being otherwise identical. The Zombie is identical to you except that its lights are out, it’s all dark inside, it knows nothing it is like to “feel like” you, subjectively.

Like the “mile-high unicycle” it stretches credulity that it could come about, and work with any natural physical history, so it may be physically impossible, but you have to concede it’s “logically possible”. (Deutsch by the way spends a good deal of time on this distinction between logical and physical possibility too, and I notice Chalmers himself has several other papers dealing with any gap between “conceivability and possibility” – interesting in its own right).

His main case is that subjective (or phenomenal) consciousness is the hard unsolved problem, as opposed to any causal, behavioural, (psychlogical) explanation of how conciousness works, which if not solved beyond dispute, is at least soluble in principle. I think he’s right there.

His other main thread is “supervenience” – roughly being dependent on, but not necessarily causally explained by. The Zombie stuff above is saying subjective (phenomenal) consciousness is not logically supervenient on the phsyical world. I like the fact he concedes that taking physics as (by definition) the most fundamental explanation of how things work in the world, consciousness must be physically supervenient on the physical world, but what he’s effectively saying that physics as it is currently known must have something missing that can reductively and logically explain subjective consciousness. I have to admit the penny hasn’t quite dropped yet on supervenience. He goes on to review all the whackier quantum consciousness theories, (even Hameroff’s pixie-dust) and for me he is right, that whilst these “may” turn out to have some relevance to the physical causal description of how psychological consciousness works, they are still not addressing the hard problem. The observer participation aspect in quantum physical outcomes is about as close as it gets, but it still doesn’t seem much like the view from the subjective side.

For me the problem he is showing is still the obvious one. “Scientific reasoning” is never going to explain subjectivity, without some new resources in addition to the logically positive objectivity of scientific reasoning, which by definition excludes subjectivity. He insists that’s not what he’s showing, but so far that’s my conclusion. Anyway, the guy’s obviously done his homework, so it seems essential to read on and absorb.

I guess the point he would agree with me is that the problem with the “hard problem of subjective consciousness” is not a mystery in the physics per se, though there may yet be something to be discovered in physics in this area, it’s an absence of the right reasoning tools and techniques generally, and perhaps specifically for explaining causation (where I need to understand his supervenience better).

Strange that Chalmers doesn’t include reference to Deutsch, I guess he must have become aware since this book however. Also don’t quite understand his objections to Dennett’s natural history views, like whatever logical and physical possibilities, any explanation has to include how it came to be. So far time is missing from Chalmers story. But there’s still time 🙂

Housekeeping

Fixed Contact page, Fixed resource pages, Pirsig pages and Pirsig Photos page in terms of broken links and some minor re-organisation. If you find any broken links please let me know.

(Still have Categories, Bibliography and RSS / XML feeds to sort. Getting there.)

Stone Me

Great story on the Beeb.

(Unfortunately it’s from that class of “today scientists announced to the media” so take it with a pinch of white powder, that they may be extrapolating their findings just a touch, working up justification for something, funding maybe ?)

The clue is the word “only” in the fifth para. Yeah right.