Hello everyone
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Ham Priday <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed. Mar 16, 2011 at 2:56 AM, "Dan Glover" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> [Ham, previously}:
>>
>> I know, of course, that [Pirsig] also equated Quality with Experience;
>> but as I have always considered experience to be the patterns, which
>> are subsequent to the primary (source), the logic of the premise
>> "Quality = Experience" still eludes me.
>>
>> [Dan]:
>>
>> Maybe this quote will help:
>>
>> "Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove
>> will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in
>> an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament
>> is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, wooly-headed,
>> crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is
>> not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of
>> experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely
>> predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is
>> reproducible. Of all experience it is the least ambiguous, least
>> mistakable there is. ..."
>Ham:
> Yes, I'm familiar with this quote. Pirsig is talking about the reaction to
> pain, which neurologists call "proprioceptive trauma" -- the body's
> protective mechanism against injury. Leaping off the stove is an autonomic
> reflex of the stimulated leg muscles, while the "oath" uttered by the victim
> is a learned habit. Nothing in this simplistic example has any relevance to
> "quality" for a non-Pirsigian.
Dan:
I'm sorry you feel that way. I think you fail to grasp the
significance of what RMP is on about and your refusal to ponder it
further does no service to the advancement of your understanding of
the MOQ.
>
>> "The reason for hammering on this so hard is that we have a culturally
>> inherited blind spot here. Our culture teaches us to think it is the
>> hot stove that directly causes the oaths. It teaches that the low
>> values are a property of the person uttering the oaths.
>>
>> "Not so. The value is between the stove and the oaths. Between the
>> subject and the object lies the value. This value is more immediate,
>> more directly sensed than any "self" or any "object" to which it might
>> be later assigned. It is more real than the stove. Whether the stove
>> is the cause of the low quality or whether possibly something else is
>> the cause is not yet absolutely certain. But that the quality is low is
>> absolutely certain. ...." [LILA]
>
> "Between the subject and the object lies the value." That much is true.
> Alas, however, the author refuses to acknowledge this division, insisting
> that subjects and objects are "patterns of Quality".
> How can a pattern of Quality be aware that it is Quality unless what he
> calls the "pattern" is an autonomous sensible subject?
>
>> Dan comments:
>>
>> Value is the primary empirical reality from which our world is
>> intellectually contructed. Value is more immediate, more directly
>> sensed than any subject or object to which it might be intellectually
>> assigned later on. Sitting on a hot stove provides direct empirical
>> evidence of experience equaling (low) quality.
>Ham:
> If the subject is " intellectually ssigned later on," how can he feel the
> pain, let alone evaluate it qualitatively?
Dan:
That is the whole point! "He" cannot feel pain. A dim apprehension of
he knows not what gets him off the hot stove. Pain is felt and
evaluated later.
Ham:
Again I maintain that a
> cognizant subject must have aesthetic or moral sensibility to discriminate
> between greater and lesser values. "Man is the measure of all things,"
> declared Protagoras. Unless you deny this, you will have to concede that it
> is the individual subject himself who determines the relative value of
> experienced phenomona.
Dan:
I think we are together on the "man is the measure of all things." But
there is more than aesthetic (intellectual) and moral (social)
sensibility (value). There is undefined Dynamic Quality.
>
> [Ham]:
>>
>> By what faculty does [Pirsig] propose that inanimate objects sense
>> Quality?
>
> [Dan]:
>>
>> In the framework of the MOQ, "object" is a convenient shorthand for
>> inorganic/biological patterns of value. So your question, from the MOQ
>> point of view, becomes: by what faculty do inorganic patterns of value
>> sense Quality?
>>
>> Since value and Quality are synonymous, inorganic patterns of value
>> are Quality. They don't sense anything intellectually. Rather, they prefer
>> certain preconditions, like iron filings prefer preconditions set up by a
>> magnetic field or the growth of crystals prefer conditions set up by
>> super-saturated liquids.
>Ham:
> Dan, do you realize that what you are postulating is nothing more than
> primitive Animism?
Dan:
I don't think that is true. From Wikipedia:
Animism (from Latin anima "soul, life")[1][2] refers to the belief
that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some
kind of life-principle.[3]
Dan comments:
If anything, it is you who is positing animism by stating inanimate
objects sense their surroundings. Or perhaps I misunderstood you?
>Dan:
>> In the framework of the MOQ, we cannot possess value. Value
>> possesses us. Human beings are seen as a colllection of patterns
>> of value plus undefined Dynamic Quality. So, taking the MOQ
>> into account, to say we desire to possess the value of what we
>> sense seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature
>> of experience.
>Ham:
> It is a radical view, I suppose. Yet, we know that we are drawn to Value,
> that it represents what we desire in life; indeed, one might say we live for
> Value ("high Quality"). Valued objects are the 'desiderata' of human
> beings. We construct these objects by consuming their value
> (experientially) for ourselves. In other words, we bring being into
> existence out of sensible Value. Doesn't this ontogeny explain the dynamics
> of Value in a more systematic way than the 'Experience = Quality' equation?
Dan:
Not to my satisfaction. I would say you have things backwards.
>
> [Ham]:
>>
>> I maintain that value-sensibility is the "core self" (sometimes called
>> 'the soul') of man. Desire is the individual's realization that spiritual
>> fufillment does not lie within himself but in the "otherness" from which
>> he was created and to which he bears witness. It is the Value of this
>> other that he seeks to possess; but he can only do this provisionally --
>> by differentiating Value experientially into the "many and many things"
>> that constitute his being in the world.
>
> [Dan]:
>>
>> In the framework of the MOQ, there are no supernatural entities like
>> spirit and soul. The MOQ is empirical. "The many" refers to static
>> quality patterns of value which are defined and discrete. Experience
>> (or awareness if you prefer) refers to Dynamic Quality which is both
>> undefined and infinitely definable.
>Ham:
> If Quality is definable only in its "infinite" state, I submit that the
> reason we can't define it "discretely" is that it we experience it as the
> finite beingness which provisionally satisfies our (spiritual) need for the
> infinite Source of our existence. Yes, that's a "supernatural entity", but
> the essential one from which all values are derived and without which we
> would not be talking.
Dan:
We do experience Quality as finite "beingness" as you put it. In the
MOQ that is called static quality. We also experience Quality in its
"infinite" state, as you put it. In the MOQ that is called Dynamic
Quality.
Ham:
Philosophy has always been a quest for this "ultimate
> reality". Unfortunately, the MoQ as I understand it does not resolve this
> quest.
Dan:
I tend to disagree that philosophy will ever discover ultimate
reality. That is beyond our limited comprehension, in my opinion.
>Ham:
> Thanks for giving me this opportunity to express my essentialist views. I
> appreciate your understanding of Pirsig and your work with 'LILA's Child'.
> And I would only hope that my insights might enhance the MoQ thesis rather
> than detract from it.
Dan:
You're welcome, Ham, and thank you too for taking your time to examine
the MOQ and its implications. I think you do indeed add to the MOQ
thesis.
Thanks again,
Dan
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