Matt said: ... anybody who wants to figure out the particular issue of DQ, perception and "sense of" needs to take into account, in particular, this passage from Pirsig's SODV (page 14): "In the third box are the biological patterns: senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition here in saying that the senses are the starting point of reality, but -- all importantly -- it includes a sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is to misread the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or disliking, is a primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for everything else an infant learns. At birth this sense of value is extremely Dynamic but as the infant grows up this sense of value becomes more and more influenced by accumulated static patterns. In the past this biological sense of value has been called the 'subjective' because there values cannot be located in an external physical object. But quantum theory has destroyed the idea that only properties located in external physical objects have reality." dmb says:In another thread there is a discussion about how the hippies confused DQ with static biological quality. Here we see a version of the same critique as it is applied to empiricism, i think. There is also some developmental psychology and quantum theory, but he is talking about the sense of value, for which there is no designated sense organ. But if we have to find a biological location for this sense of value the curious case of Jill Bolte-Taylor would suggest that it is an entire hemisphere of the brain. To put her analogy in terms of the MOQ, the right side is tuned into the undifferentiated, to dynamic quality and the left side chops it up into static words and concepts. The sense of value that is extremely dynamic in the infant is like a clear blue sky and the accumulation of static patterns are clouds that form in the sky. For most of us, the clouds have been accumulating for so long that we see only clouds and would even deny that there is any such thing as a blue sky. But it's always there above the clouds no matter how thick they get. In other words, we continue to use both hemispheres of our brains throughout life even if we're unaware of it. In January of 2004, Matt said: I think the quote can be read "as implying that the 'sense of value' is not analogous to the five traditional senses, but 'primary.'" [from Wim's earlier post--MK] Interpreting the passage this way is consistent with Pirsig's redescription of reality as Quality. With a "sense of value" as primary, I take it this means that all other senses evolve out of the original historically and in each individual's case the five senses are simply five different kinds of a "sense of value."
dmb says: While it's also true that this sense of value plays a central role in Pirsig's version of evolution, I think the quote is better understood in terms of radical empiricism. In that context, this "primary sense" would be an alternative phrase for "primary empirical reality" or "pure experience". Matt said: I would also add, Steve, that your addition of "worseness" to "betterness" in your description of what Pirsig means by DQ is a conspicuous alteration of what Pirsig says with fair consistency in Lila (despite the SODV passage just discussed, where he says "liking and disliking"). dmb says: Better and worse are just two sides of the same coin. It's DQ that gets you off the hot stove. One could say it was worse on the stove or one could say it was better off the stove. Either way, it means the same thing. Likewise, survival of the best and extinction of the worst both operate on exactly the same principle. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
