From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 01:27:18 GMT
"Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not
absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an
absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences. Therefore
when you strike "cause" from the language and substitute "value" you are not
only replacing an empirically meaningless term with a meaningful one; you
are using a term that is more appropriate to actual observation." PIRSIG
Sam:
My point is that unlike atoms and genes etc, symbols have no direct
relationship with value. It is the human judgement that has a relationship
with value, and a human judgement which says whether a particular symbol has
value or not. I can't see the point of building up a level on a derivative
aspect, rather than the primary aspect.
"Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual, personal
Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I were in
his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution
started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than
that...a new spiritual rationality...in which the ugliness and the
loneliness and the spiritual blankness of dualistic technological reason
would become illogical. Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason
was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality." PIRSIG
Sam:
...it's precisely what I object to. The idea of intellect being 'above' the
emotions is, IMHO, incoherent - that's precisely why I object to the RMP
account.
"The MOQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject
and object, mind and matter, by embedding them all in a larger system of
understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that
go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary
relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one." PIRSIG
"The MoQ says that science's empirical rejection of biological and social
values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because
the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than
the old biological and social patterns." PIRSIG
Sam:
My premise is that there is an emotional element in the fourth level, that
cannot be reduced to levels 2 or 3. Which I think the MoQ *does* deny -
doesn't it?
"But the MoQ also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses
an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant
experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one-is another matter altogether.
Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it
is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality
as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value
is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific
progress itself." PIRSIG
DMB CONCLUDES:
Sam rejects the MOQ's fourth level, saying its incoherent "without the
determining influence of human judgement." But it seems to me that the MOQ
describes a universe in which entirely saturated in judgements. In the MOQ,
even particles have perferences and CAUSE is replaced by VALUE in our
scientific descriptions. Sam complains that the intellectual level is an
"inert" logic detector, but, as I understand it, the MOQ's aim is to fix the
"value-free" sterility of SOM and does so by embedding it in an evolutionary
web of values. From dirt to divinity, the she-bang is about judgements, at
increasingly higher levels. At every level, the "choosing unit" is DQ, but
the static forms of each level can only react in their own static terms. I
suspect the search for the center of our intellectual decision making powers
and to frame intellect so strongly around the concept of the autonomous
individuals is a common sensical hangover from our subject-object world
view. The MOQ's conception of the self is more like a bundle of perferences
than a bag of skin. I suspect that what Sam is really objectiing to is the
same thing Pirsig objects to, the "spiritual blankness" of SOM reason, the
"value-free" logic of scientific materialism, and its other Spockish
qualities. This is the kind of intellect that Pirsig condemns for its blind
attack social values, points to as the source of our "terrible secret
loneliness", of that feeling of having to "drink life through a straw", and
the like. This alienation from our world and the estrangement from our own
lives is, i think, partly derived from our view of our selves as subjects
and is very much a SOM thing. I think the MOQ would say that this idea of
self is good enough in most cases, but that ultimately, this self is
fiction. In the end, the MOQ is a kind of mysticism.
But there's plenty of room for human judgement and judgements of all kinds,
even for subatomic preferences.
Thanks.
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