Hi Focs,
Here's the start of the post I began writing at the beginning of the
month ...
====
As things worked out, my "emotivism" post from last month preempted
the selection of the July topic. I'm still waiting for Rick to reply to
that, but appreciate his "diligence" in not rushing things.
====
No hard feelings Rick. I've read many good and relevant posts in both
forums, but something still seems wrong.
This restaurant has a menu and food, but it doesn't seem to satiate.
RICK writes:
<<< I want to start by saying that I've been a little bothered the fact
that
this thread is running mainly under the heading "Science or Emotivism?"
because I feel as though it misdirects the thrust of the topic. The
main
question should be more like, "How can we discern the respective level
for
any individual pattern?" The idea of science/emotivism doesn't come into
play until we start speculating on the consequences of asking this
initial
question.>>>
Let me put aside the "levels" issue for now, because I think it is a
distraction.
I consider the "Science" part of the topic heading to represent what we
THINK and the "Emotivism" to represent what we FEEL. I think that the
separation of thinking and feeling is a major part of the malaise that
Pirsig tried to describe in ZAMM.
When I experience something new, how do I feel about it? To be perfectly
honest, I don't always immediately know. The item as described on the
menu sometimes is nothing like what turns up at the table
- and then comes the first taste - how is it?
Interesting . . . let me see . . .
I've never tasted anything quite like it . . . reminds me of .
. .
Now I see - it's a mixture of XXX and YYY - how unusual ...
Actually I rather like it . . .
The point is that what we feel about something is dynamic - it takes
time to make a value judgment.
That judgment forms in the light of previous experience and involves
some degree of thought. The feelings and thoughts run together and
support each other - we think about what we are feeling, and end up with
feelings about our thoughts. The "experience" - the Quality Event - is
the synthesis of feeling and thinking.
When the experience is dominated by structured logical thinking, the
Classical angle prevails.
When the experience is dominated by emotions, the Romantic angle
prevails.
Both sides nourish each other - which is why one can study something and
learn to love it.
Human thought is more than just the logical operations that a computer
can perform. The human mind performs the logic and then we decide how we
FEEL about the result.
Pirsig's 4 levels provide some structure for doing the logic. One can
use them to construct RATIONALIZATIONS of some scenario and thereby
produce possible answers to a question.
Notice that answers is plural. Whenever someone asks a simple question
(e.g. was the A-bomb moral ?), we get multiple, often contradictory
answers, each of them with a supporting argument. Then we get to decide
how we FEEL about the various answers, and everyone picks their
favorite. Feelings provide the motivation for pursuing a particular
rationalization, and then feelings provide the scale for judging that
rationalization.
I think that part of the frustration I feel and Rick expresses comes
from trying to decide whether the feelings drive the thoughts or the
thoughts drive the feelings - we're back to our old "cause and effect"
dilemma.
As soon as we put aside our quest for causality, we can then accept that
thoughts and feelings naturally drift along together, and thus the
answer to the question of the month may simple be "MU, unask the
question".
Jonathan
------- End of forwarded message -------
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