LS Re: Conceptions of Dynamic Quality


Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:52:20 +0100


Sun, 22 March
Keith A. Gillette wrote:

snip.......
> Last time I argued that the only place I could find Pirsig making a
> positive argument for Reality = Quality was in the "between the horns"
> section of *ZMM*. Since then, I've found another argument for the identity.
> In Chapter 5 of *Lila* (pages 75-76 of the Bantam paperback edition, Pirsig
> takes on the logical positivists by arguing that it *is* an empirically
> verifiable fact that value = experience, using the hot stove example.
> Pirsig seems to think that the identification of experience with value *is*
> empirically verifiable. If this holds true, I think my personal criteria
> for justifying the belief will have been fulfilled.

> However, I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around this example.
> What's to keep us from reverting to the traditional understanding of the
> hot stove example where the oaths the person on the hot stove utters come
> from their subjective valuation of pain, not from the primary empirical
> reality? I'm hoping someone can re-explain this passage to me in a way that
> shows how this latter interpretation isn't plausible. Anybody have a better
> handle on this than me? Are there any other empirically verifiable
> consequences of MoQ that would strengthen Bo's & Doug's analogy to
> scientific theories?

Hi Keith
This section from your letter of 22 March has been on my mind ever
since. Let me have a go at the HOT STOVE example.

This demonstration is the absolute first of the MOQ introduction
- even before the equation: "If a thing can't be distinguished from
anything else...etc." Pirsig must see it as a crucial one. One can
almost hear him grit his teeth over the effort to convey an
insight - self-evident as insights are to the beholder -
to the reader.

The first thing that comes to mind is the autonomous nerve system's
reflexes; you touch something hot and the limb retracts
automatically, and you wonder why this explains that VALUE is between
the object you touch and your subjective sensation of pain. Yes, even
if you admit that the reaction occurs BEFORE the pain, you still
don't see where value enters the picture, it's the way the human
organism is hardwired. Full stop!

But however far you go back through the train of events you will never
find the point where OBJECTIVE heat turns into SUBJECTIVE reaction.
Either the subject goes right into the stove, or the stove becomes
the subject. [an aside here: See Richard Douglas' eminent wine/body,
bee/bee sting examples] What it amounts to is that the subject
"smears" itself onto its surroundings and/or the object invades the
subject.

Pirsig's conclusion is that if the subject/object division is
artificial some THIRD "agent" is primary to and mediates - even
CREATES - subject and object. He goes on to call it VALUE because
this term straddles both S and O (in the SOM context), and have been
troubling it from back when?

The value in this particular example I would call Biology - common to
all organisms. Remember the amoeba near the acid drop simile in ZMM?
But value is the creator/mediator of reality at all Static levels. To
start at the Inorganic dimension it mediates the the
CHAOS/INORGANIC ORDER relationship (or moral code), at the Biology
level it creates the INORGANIC ORDER/ORGANIC ORDER one, at the
Social plane it creates ORGANIC ORDER/SOCIAL ORDER relationship and -
finally - at the Intellectual level - makes this seeming dualism
into an eternal truth - the ubiquitous SOM - which is (just)
another value mediation; perhaps we may call it the SOCIAL
ORDER/CULTURAL ORDER code Remember that he structures that the
various levels "sediments" - from bottom up: 'Matter', 'Life',
'Society' are plain enough, but the top structure Pirsig only vaguely
calls "Culture".

Keith you say:
>Are there any other empirically verifiable consequences of MoQ that
>would strengthen Bo's & Doug's analogy to scientific theories?

EVERYTHING verifies it, but I am constantly on the look-out for the
perfect example. In the meantime I stick to Pirsig's. Also, this is
my twist to the HOT STOVE demo; there are surely better ones. If you
want the scientific version it is best displayed by Benjamin Libet's
experiments so elegantly popularized in the mentioned book by Tor
Nörretranders. I'll be glad to try to popularize the popularization
if you wish.

One final thing. When you and - particularly - Donny (correctly!!!)
assert that "truth" is determined by society I think it is the
culture you both speak about, the social value level is something
very elemental.

Thanks for giving the "professor" an opportunity to expound ;-)

Bo

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