From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Wed Aug 18 2004 - 10:09:44 BST
Hi Platt
Platt said:
The question still hanging out there is, "Awareness by whom?"
Paul:
We are now both begging the question. The question of "awareness by
whom" arises only when awareness is assumed to fundamentally belong to a
subject.
Paul previously said:
> Or this from LILA?:
>
> "The low value that can be derived from sitting on a hot stove is
> obviously an experience even though it is not an object and even
though it
> is not subjective. The low value comes first, then the subjective
thoughts
> that include such things as stove and heat and pain come second."
[LILA Ch
> 8]
Platt said:
In this case, the answer to who is experiencing low value is the stove
sitter.
Paul:
Read the last statement again. "The value comes first, then...such
things as stove.." You are simply defending the SOM view that there is a
subject and a stove and when they come together there is an experience.
It sounds right because it is how you have come to think and it is how
our language is constructed. The language can remain the same as long as
we understand that it is not philosophically correct.
Pirsig from LILA'S CHILD:
"When the term "experience" is used one automatically enters the
subject-object way of thinking that there is an object that is
experienced and a subject that experiences it. All sorts of tangles
begin.."
Platt said:
Maybe metaphysically speaking. But not in everyday, common-usage-of-the-
language-speaking.
Paul:
As above, and also below.
Platt said:
Experience is always associated with a person, or at least a life form.
Paul:
I would say that the experience we can conceptualise always results in a
form of some kind.
Pirsig from LILA'S CHILD:
"I think the trouble is with the word, "experience." It can be used in
at least three ways. It can be used as a relationship between an object
and another object (as in Los Angeles experiencing earthquakes.) It is
more commonly used as a subject-object relationship. This relationship
is usually considered the basis of philosophic empiricism and
experimental scientific knowledge. In a subject-object metaphysics, this
experience is between a preexisting object and subject, but in the MOQ,
there is no pre-existing subject or object."
Platt said:
Ah, now we get to the nub. "Atoms experience." Seems Dan Glover, who
knows the MOQ as well as anybody, disagrees.
Paul:
It seems Robert Pirsig, who knows the MOQ as well as anybody, disagrees.
Pirsig From LILA'S CHILD:
"Inorganic objects experience events but do not react to them
biologically, socially, or intellectually. They react to these
experiences inorganically, according to the laws of physics."
Platt said:
He wrote recently: "I didn't say an atom 'values' nor am I aware of
Robert Pirsig saying so. That would indicate awareness. I believe
'preference' is the term he uses."
Paul:
Yes it is, but preference is an assertion of value and value is
experience, therefore inorganic forces experience. An atom *is* a
pattern of values.
Platt said:
Way back in the early days of MOQ discuss we had a lengthy debate about
the issue, "Are atoms aware?" As I recall the general agreement was that
the proposition had to be accepted if the MOQ was to logically hold
water.
This seems to be your position today. But you can see the problem: try
to
convince someone that atoms are sentient in any way whatsoever, even if
just a wee bit. Most people will think your crazy. I hate to see the MOQ
flounder on the proposition that atoms possess some sort of inner
sensibility.
Paul:
I'm not trying to convince anybody that atoms are sentient, that implies
that preference is a form of sentience. I would instead say that, in the
MOQ, sentience is a form of preference.
Platt said:
Ultimate reality can be known by a person through personal experience.
That "person" keeps hanging around no matter how hard we try to ignore
him, except presumably when it comes to atoms.
Paul:
Ultimate reality is "known" when the "person" supposedly doing the
knowing can no longer be said to exist.
I'm not trying to ignore this "person," I'm trying to be careful about
confusing common sense assumptions/everyday language with this
metaphysics. The two need to be related, as occurs in ZMM and LILA, but
when they are unwittingly tangled, I think we lose the value of both.
Platt said:
Thanks for all the quotes. In the interest of space I won't repeat them,
though I'm sorely tempted to replay what Pirsig says about socialists. .
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in every one of the quotes you offered, a
person or persons is presupposed.
Paul:
The quotes were supposed to demonstrate that Dynamic Quality, although
not arrived at through reason, may be incorporated into a rational
system. This is what I thought you were questioning.
Regarding the presupposition of people in the quotes, LILA is largely a
practical application of the MOQ to provide an alternative
interpretation of human history and knowledge. Besides which, I'm not
saying that people don't exist or experience, I *am* saying that a
subject is not the starting point of experience.
You know, in a Forum of Pirsigians, I'm surprised I'm having to defend
that last proposition at all.
Regards
Paul
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