Greetings Philosophers:
My grandchildren have departed after a month�s visit which
necessitated my temporary absence from the ongoing
discussion. Still I�ve followed the debate among Glenn, Ian, Jon
and 3WD with great interest and thank them for the high quality of
their conversation�clear, succinct and refreshingly free of
personal attacks.
Even though I don�t intend to intervene at this point I can�t resist
reminding Glenn that the belief held by science that truth is what is
verifiable empirically cannot itself be verified empirically, leaving
room for other equally �true� interpretations of reality based on
equally unprovable assumptions, such as Pirsig�s theory of
competing moral levels.
Or to put it directly, science, like all worldviews, is ultimately based
on faith.
Which leads me to speculate that not only is their a material world
�out there� for us to explore and contemplate (with science at the
forefront), but also a mathematical world, a moral world and
indeed an aesthetic world, each one as �real� as the other.
The mistake we moderns make, inhibited as we are by so-called
�objective truth,� is our failure to give adequate weight to ALL our
receptors of experience including thought, emotion and intuition.
It seems obvious that besides our physical senses we possess a
symbolic sense (language, thought), a moral sense (value) and
an aesthetic sense (beauty) by means of which we experience
worlds beyond the material-biological.
The inexorable evolution of the universe toward the highest value
of freedom has allowed us to escape from life experienced by
animals limited to the physical, temporal world to apprehend the
worlds of beauty, morality and imagination. In fact, the evidence of
our senses points to the fact that these other worlds
interpenetrate and illuminate the physical world.
It is the purpose of art to reveal these worlds. And in our pursuit of
truth, goodness and beauty we �feel� and �see� these realities,
broadening and illuminating our merely material lives.
IMHO it is the genius of Pirsig to show us for the first time the
moral world beyond what is hinted at by our moral �feelings.� By
building an intellectual pattern describing the pervasiveness of
Quality he has opened and made vivid the world of morality similar
to the way theories by Pythogoras opened up the world of
mathematics and paintings by unknown artists in the caves of
Lascaux opened the world of beauty.
That our physical senses are limited is unarguable. That we know
more than the data provided by our physical senses is
unquestionable. The puzzle is: How? One answer seems to be
the capacity of our other senses to collect and arrange data that
comes to us from other worlds that are as real as what we
normally refer to as �the real world� which, due to its challenge of
adapt or die, captures most of our attention.
Platt
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