Platt,
Sorry it took so long to respond, but here are my most recent thoughts on the
test.
FROM THE PIRSIGIAN TEST:
Q4) We possess a sense of quality that is a genuine perception?
ROG:
>This one seems misleading or oversimplified. Our senses are of
>quality. We are of quality.
PLATT (Quotes)
Chap. 9: If you had asked the brujo what ethical principles he was
following he probably wouldn't have been able to tell you. He wouldn't
have understood what you were talking about. He was just following
some vague sense of "better-ness" that he couldn't have defined if he
had wanted to.
Chap. 15: In all sexual selection, Lila chooses, Dynamically, the
individual she wants to project into the future. If he excites her sense of
Quality she joins him to perpetuate him into another generation, and
he lives on.
“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.”
ROG:
You have certainly made your point. Thanks. I guess I must conciously
depart from Pirsig on this one. I think that the sense of quality works as a
metaphor, but I think he is oversimplifying. I am an advocate of the theory
of biology touted by Varela and Maturana called autopoiesis. The central
theme is that living organisms "bring forth" the world based upon what they
respond to and how they respond. Every species brings forth a different
world based upon their evolutionary and (to a lesser degree) personal
history. I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but I know several
members of the forum share the interest in this theory. The point is that I
think that an organism's sense of quality IS the organism. Perhaps it could
even be said that our sense of quality is us AND our world. I think Pirsig is
being too conservative on this one..
Q5) Values are a separate category from subjects or objects?
ROG:
>No, subjects and objects are types of value patterns.
PLATT (Quotes)
Chap. 5: 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.
ROGER:
>I think a more defining and central concept of the MOQ is that "Matter is
>just a name for certain inorganic value patterns." And that substance is
>"not some independent primary reality." Both of these are from Ch12.
PLATT:
Here are two more quotes to bolster my position that this ‘separate
category’ is central to the MOQ:
“What the Metaphysics of Quality would do is take this separate
category, Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects
and objects.” (LILA, Chap. 5)
ROG:
Isn't this exactly what I said? ....subjects and objects are types of
patterns.
PLATT (quoting again)
“Eventually my unusual teaching methods came to the attention of the
other professors in the department and in a friendly way they asked the
question that connects all this with the struggles of Niels Bohr: ‘is
quality in the subject or in the object?’ The answer that was finally given
was, ‘neither, Quality is a separate category of experience that is
neither subject or object.’ This was the beginning of the system of
thought called the Metaphysics of Quality. It has lasted for more than 35
years now.” (SODV Paper)
ROG:
I don't disagree with this quote either (he actually lifts it for this paper
from ZMM). He is refering to the predecessor of DQ, the pure experience from
which we derive static patterns. Lets not argue on this anymore, but do note
that Pirsig argues in Ch 12 that every thing that can be described can be
contained in his 4 levels. Later (i forget where) he even says that the
first two levels are objective and the top two are subjective. Lets agree to
differ on this one...ok?
PLATT (re: whether the world is getting better or worse):
I don’t think Pirsig would have gone on to the lengths he did in Chap.
24 and other places if he didn’t think it was important. Civilizations rise
and fall, and from what historians tell us, it’s morality (in the social
sense) or lack thereof that is a primary cause. When families, the basic
social unit, begin to disintegrate as they are in the U.S. today, its hard
not to be concerned. But, you’re right—we could argue all day. We’ll
just have to disagree on the central tenet bit.
ROG:
I agree he got fairly cynical in a time when things were seeming worse rather
than better in the US. I do not believe the MOQ is a pessimistic philosophy.
It leads to the conclusion that over the LONG TERM, quality will tend to
advance, becoming more dynamic and versatile. This has been the history so
far. Why will it change now? Is quality no longer advancing?
Let me know your thoughts.
Rog
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