At 05:34 PM 3/19/2007, you wrote: >[Marsha again] >In a monist metaphysics, how is the comparison being executed? > >[Arlo] >I just answered this. The comparison is "executed" in the near-immediate >valuative experience of Quality. > >For the amoeba, it experiences low-quality (a valuative experience (which is >redundant to me, but I use it for emphasis)) and moves until it experiences >something better. It will keep moving until that "betterness" outweighs the >low-quality. > >Humans compare using a wide array of symbolic understandings to move the >experience into post-experiential representation. I'll give you >Pirsig one more >time. > >"The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our >environment can understand is that 'Quality is the response of an organism to >its environment' (he used this example because his chief questioners seemed to >see things in terms of stimulus-response behavior theory). An >amoeba, placed on >a plate of water with a drip of dilute sulfuric acid placed nearby, will pull >away from the acid (I think). If it could speak the amoeba, without knowing >anything about sulfuric acid, could say, 'This environment has poor quality.' >If it had a nervous system it would act in a much more complex way to overcome >the poor quality of the environment. It would seek analogues, that is, images >and symbols from its previous experience, to define the unpleasant nature of >its new environment and thus 'understand' it." (ZMM) > >This same thing is addressed in 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, 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. 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." (LILA) > >The valuative experience is first. Subjective (and Objective) experience comes >later for the person, but not the amoeba. > >(By the way, I say "valuative experience" is redundant for this reason. "The >value itself is an experience".)
Arlo, In a monistic metaphysics there is only one substance. Once broken down into the many (SQ), your explanations makes sense. But there is no such division within Quality or DQ. m 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/
