Bo, Chris, Marsha --
Here's the gist of what Pisig says about causation in LILA:
"The only difference between causation and value is that
the word 'cause' implies absolute certainty whereas the
implied meaning of "value" is one of preference."
I would suggest that there is another difference: the passage of time.
Without the temporal dimension (of human experience), causation as the
direct result of a prior action or event would be impossible. If time is
the mode of experience, rather than an inherent property of existence, Value
is "causative" non-sequentially, while "preference" remains the property of
the observing subject. Creation then becomes a differentiated product of
experience with Value as its source. I define the subject of existence as
value-sensibility, and the "actualized" world of experience as its creation.
This avoids the necessity of chicken-and-egg, cause-and-effect scenarios and
the "forests of pulpwood" which Pirsig laments being sacrificed to debate
the issue.
Marsha says to David Swift:
I hope that your strictly physical performance is some kind of
interpretative dance, because if you are going to use words to
explain it will have a mental component.
That's a red herring, Marsha. There is no alternative to words for
explication, which is why we have philosophy.
Bo says to Chris:
As you will see this is the "ordinary" - in SOM-speak - physical
causation Pirsig talks about, iron filings caused into a particular
pattern by a magnet, and although his observation may be
philosophically valid it sounds a bit contrived -- No causation
because ...."we don't see it, touch it, hear it or feel it". By such
criterions a lot of phenomena become paradoxical.
I agree. Iron filings "preferring" attachment to a magnet is a contrivance
by any standard and is epistemologically unsound. Preference requires
sensibility, for one thing, and by what neuro-physiological principle does
the author ascribe sensibility to an inert scrap of iron? Clearly, desire
and preference are exclusive to psycho-emotional subjectivity. And, Bo, as
I've said before, when you reject subjects and objects, you eliminate Value.
[Bo, continues]:
As said I don't believe that value versions of the scientific
disciplines (f.ex. a Q-physics where "B values precondition A")
has a future. The SOL presents a more elegant solution by saying
that intellect's S/O has created all paradoxes (while SOM) as
MOQ's 4th. static level they all dissolve witout a trace.
Yes, but it isn't "intellect's S/O", it's the INDIVIDUAL's experiential S/O.
Intellect is the cognitive capacity of a human being, not a level of Value.
Difference is derived from the primary split between Sensibility and
objective Otherness. That's how we become individuated beings who
differentiate Value into the multifold objects of our experiential reality.
Pirsig also asks something else that is controversial in a later paragraph
(Chpt. 8) than the one quoted above:
"But if there is no substance, it must be asked, why isn't
everything chaotic? Why do our experiences _act_ as if
they inhere in something? When you pick up a glass of water,
why don't the properties of that glass go flying off in all directions?"
In point of fact, they do. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms diffuse into the
atmosphere, photons are reflected from the glass, and thermal energy from
your hand is transferred to the water. It just so happens that we don't
experience these properties, just as we don't experience being bombarded
constantly by x-rays, rf waves, and variations in atmospheric pressure and
electro-magnetic fields. I dare say, if we were able to experience
everything going on in the cosmos, it WOULD be "chaotic". Fortunately, we
are designed to experience only a finite fraction of these happenings, and
we intellectualize only the sensible events as "physical reality", negating
all the rest as "nothigness". That's the selective process by which human
beings make order and continuity out of non-symmetry and chaos.
This quandary will never be resolved from the premises that
S/O is reality's deepest split. MOQ's dynamic/static premises
must be applied and in this context all S/Os are STATIC
intellectual patterns - included psychological/physical - and
only valid at that level. No need to look for SOM problems
that have been solved by the MOQ.
Again, "patterning" is the work of the human intellect. Patterns themselves
are not metaphysical reality; they are only intellectual projections of
beingness that represent the values to which we subscribe. The
differentiated universe is our actualized world, a product of the
sensibility/otherness dichotomy. All the laws of cause-and-effect, logic,
mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences are derived from human
experience. We depend upon them to survive and flourish as a value-sensible
species. But they are not innate or essential to ultimate reality.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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