Greetings Philosphers:
Never have I come across a more startling and accurate comparison-in-a-
nutshell between Pirisg and the current popular worldview than in the
following quote from a new book by Robert Wright (author of "The Moral
Annimal') entitled "NonZero."
>From Robert Wright�s, �NonZero�
�According to the mainstream scientific view, consciousness �subjective
experience, sentience�has zero behavioral manifestations; it doesn�t do
anything. Sure, you may feel as if your feelings do things. Isn�t it the
sensation of heat, after all, that causes you to withdraw your hand from the
surprisingly hot stove? The answer presupposed by modern behavioral
science is: no. Corresponding to the subjective sensation of heat is an
objective, physical flow of biological information. Physical impulses signifying
heat travel up your arm and are processed by your equally physical brain.
The output is a physical signal that coerces your muscles into withdrawing
your hand. Here, at the sheerly physical level, is where the real action is.
Your sensation of pain bears roughly the relation to real action that your
shadow bears to you. In technical terms: consciousness, subjective
experience, is �epiphenomenal� �it is always an effect, never a cause.�
>From Robert Pirsig�s �Lila�
�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, woolly-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. Later the person may generate some
oaths to describe this low value, but the value will always come first, the
oaths second. Without the primary low valuation, the secondary oaths will
not follow.
�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. It is the
primary empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat and
oaths and self are later intellectually constructed.
�Once this primary relationship is cleared up an awful lot of mysteries get
solved. The reason values seem so woolly-headed to empiricists is that
empiricists keep trying to assign them to subjects or objects. You can't do
it. You get all mixed up because values don't belong to either group. They
are a separate category all their own.�
Next time somebody asks me what's so great about the MoQ, I'm going to
say, "Here, read this," and present them a copy of the above. If that doesn't
capture their interest, nothing will.
Platt
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