TO: Platt, Jon, Struan, Horse, David B. and Rick
From: Roger
JON wrote:
“I agree with Rick and Horse. Since everything is value, WE must
automatically sense value first.”
DAVID B wrote:
“I think Pirsig is just saying that reality is something that happens before
you
have a chance to think about it. And it seems that he’s even saying that
experience of value even precedes the transmission of raw sensory data,
which is more like a result of the primary experience. That’s how Pirsig’s
Radical Empiricism is different that the empiricism of Kant or the other
modern epistemologists. They were talking about sensory data and the way
OUR MINDS shape it, but Pirsig is talking about experience in a broader
sense.
It’s hard to talk about this stuff, but it seems “experience” as a product
of the
PHYSICAL SENSES is very much a SOM conception and the MOQ’s sense of
“experience” is about an event that occurs before the senses are activated,
if
you will.”[Emphasis added by Roger]
ROGER comments:
I am not sure if I am offering a different view, or just stating it
differently, but my interpretation of Pirsig and James (Radical Empiricism)
is that ...
Pure experience or value is the essence or base of reality. Consciousness
and external reality, subject and object, internal and external are derived
from this pure experience. Therefore, value is the dynamic reality which is
then divided (or in James words,"counted twice over") into subject and
object.
I just want to clarify or highlight that "we" and "our minds" and our
"physical senses" are also derived from the Quality Event. After initially
writing this, I have since noticed that Struan just provided one of the
quotes of Pirsig's that basically ends with the same thing. (Though if I am
not mistaken, the quote is from ZMM and Struan has edited out all narrative
parts )
[PIRSIG]"Quality is not a thing. It is an event. It is the event at which the
subject becomes
aware of the object. And because without objects there can be no subject,
quality is the event at
which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible. Quality is not
just the result of a
collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and
object themselves is deduced
from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and
objects, which are then
mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!"
I plan to respond directly to Struan on his commentary of the above in my
next post.
Rog
PS -- Platt, I am almost done with Nonzero. Very interesting book.
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