From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 17:41:43 GMT
Paul, Sam, et al,
[Paul to Sam]> With respect to your question, "Is Pirsig doing something
different with
> "experience" than the Western empirical tradition?" These statements
> come to mind:
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. Experience
> which is not valued is not experienced. The two are the same." [LILA
> p418]
It goes on to say that value is everything. So in some cubic millimeter ten
miles below the earth's surface there must be experiencing/value, or else we
must say that the inorganic matter in that cubic millimeter does not exist.
How is either statement justified empirically? (N.B, I think there is
valuing going on in that cubic millimeter, but I don't see how to claim that
my thinking is empirically based.) Pirsig does support his claim by invoking
quantum mechanics, and saying that probability can be seen as value, that
is, that the subatomic entities are showing preferences for some states over
others. This may well be a good way of thinking about it, but there is no
empirical way to conclude it. We don't actually know that we are dealing
with preferences on the part of the subatomic entity.
>
> "[T]he 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." [LILA p113, my caps]
There are good reasons (to which a good chunk of ZAMM is addressed) for
saying that value is neither in the subject nor in the object. However, to
go on from this and claim that the value exists prior to the distinction
into subject and object has no empirical basis, as far as I can see.
Instead, it appears that Pirsig makes this second claim based on mystical
reports. But why those mystical reports and not others? For example, another
kind of mystical report says that experience (or value), subject and object
are all three created together in a kind of tri-unity. This has different
philosophical consequences than the first one. What is the basis for
choosing one over the other? Whatever it is, it is not empirical. It looks
to me much more like a case of choosing one authority over another.
By the way, the entire discussion of subject and object in the MOQ is
illogical, because Pirsig uses "subject" without distinguishing between two
different meanings of "subject". One meaning (call it subject[1]) is more or
less equivalent to "mind" as in mind vs. matter. The other meaning (call it
subject[2]) is that which is aware of any object, whether mental or
physical. Subject[1] can be replaced by "social and intellectual SPOV".
Subject[2] cannot, or at least there is nothing in the MOQ that argues for
saying that it too is a SPOV. The issue is simply ignored. But when mystical
reports refer to transcending normal S/O experience, they are sometimes, but
not always, referring to subject[2], it is an issue that must be addressed.
>
> "I think the trouble is with the word, "experience." It is...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....So in the MOQ experience comes first, everything
> else comes later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to scientific
> empiricism, which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is not
> really so pure." [LILA'S CHILD p548]
Again, what is the *empirical* basis for making the claim that experience
comes first? What is the response to my saying that I do not experience
myself as coming second after the experience?
> I also asked about the statement in LILA that you quote above. Here is
> the exchange:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Paul: If empirical experience begins with the senses, and the senses are
> biological patterns, are biological patterns necessary for empirical
> experience? If so, does this contradict the MOQ statement that nothing
> exists prior to experience?
>
> Pirsig: In the MOQ empirical experience begins with Quality which
> generates intellectual patterns. One of these intellectual patterns is
> named 'senses,' but this pattern is derived from the study of anatomy
> and is not primary in the actual empirical process.
I experience trees, thoughts, and so on, or think I do. I do not experience
Quality, at least not obviously in the way I experience objects. After an
analysis that shows that I have no inherent self-existence, then I can
(maybe) say that experience begins with Quality. So I can see that a
rationalist might claim that experience begins with Quality, but not an
empiricist. Unless, again, one has mystical Realization of I-less
experience. But if one doesn't, but thinks that mystics who say so do, then,
again, one is arguing from authority, not empiricism.
>
> Finally, with respect to the MOQ statement that "all legitimate human
> knowledge arises from the senses," I think that this is contrasting
> empiricism with rationalism which, as I'm sure you know, privileges the
> use of reason over experience as the basis for legitimate knowledge.
Since when is reason not experience? Why privilege sensory experience over
rational? Especially given my remarks above about Pirsig's not
distinguishing between subject[1] and subject[2]. For subject[2], thoughts
and sense perceptions are just two classes of objects[2].
- Scott
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