Krimel and All --
[Marsha quotes Pirsig]:
"Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific
deductions
that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the
cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical
procession."
(LILA, Chapter 29)
[Krimel]:
The problem with this is that Values are perceived. They are our emotions,
Being moved by our values is a response to our emotions. I think it is bad
mojo to claim that emotion is the primary stuff of reality.
Also I think it is very different to say that an understanding of subject,
objects or anything else spring from Value and quite another to have crap
just popping in out of nowhere as a product of experience.
I would totally agree that emotional commitment is required for decision
making but that does not make it the primal metaphysical existent.
It is indeed on the leading edge of experience. We do not have enough time
to respond to the environment on the basis of reason. If our species had
begun that way, our line would have died out long ago. Rational thinking
is
a secondary process that is added to the capacities of primates of our
lineage. It serves to evaluate, refine and improve actions based purely on
experience or emotion. Rational concepts are secondary but mighty useful.
I gave up trying to argue with you months ago. Since then most of your
posts have compared various philosophers with William James. They are
dissertations of the kind that Pirsig would call "philosophology".
But I have to say I'm impressed, and quite surprised, by the recent stance
you have taken with Ron and John. In particular, I call attention to your
statement: "The problem with this is that Values are perceived." This is
probably the most significant observation anyone has made here in recent
years.
Indeed, you have expressed the problem I have with Pirsig's philosophy.
Values are perceived; they require a sensible agent to realize them. Man is
the subjective agent, and his response to value is emotional. I've said
before that "unrealized value" is an oxymoron. It simply doesn't exist.
The source of value does not reside in the empirical world or in man's
intellect. The sense of value is proprietary to the individual and cannot
be realized without it.
Yet, Pirsig has posited Value (or its epistemological equivalent, Quality)
as the fundamental reality -- the reality of nature and the universe as well
as man's sense of morality. In one fell swoop he has renamed what
philosophers and theologians throughout the ages have called God or the
Creator. He doesn't define it, he says, because "everybody knows what it
is" and because metaphysical definitions only "destroy the concept". Had he
attempted to do so, he would have discovered that epistemology does not
support his euphemistic concept.
Undeniably, the ability to realize value is fundamental to man's material
progress and spiritual fulfillment. But value theorized as "the primal
metaphysical existent" is a major flaw in the MoQ.
Now that we are aware of this error, what do you suggest we do about it?
Respectfully,
Ham
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