From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 11 2004 - 22:22:48 GMT
Rick, Matt and all moqer focers:
Does the MOQ's 'sense of value' make sense? Yea, I think it does. The
problem is the abject ubiquity of this sense. It's everywhereness has a way
of making it invisible.
Pirsig said in his SODV paper:
"The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition here in saying
that the senses are the starting point of reality, but -- all importantly --
it includes a sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is to
misread the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or disliking, is a
primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for everything else an infant
learns."
Matt wrote:
With a "sense of value" as primary, I take it this means that all other
senses evolve out of the original historically and in each individual's case
the five senses are simply five different kinds of a "sense of value."
...However, ...Pirsig says, "it includes a sense of value," which is hard to
interpret any other way than as an _addition_, not as a redescription.
dmb says:
As I understand it, Pirsig is comparing the MOQ's empiricism to traditional
empiricism. It very much follows this tradition, but adds a sixth sense and
insists that values are knowable through this sense. But this only defines
the MOQ's brand of empiricism, not the 'sense of value' itself. This sense,
you may recall, is ubiquitous even beyond the biological senses. Below the
second level, even particles have preferences. Its hard to imagine how
morals and science could exists without 'a sense of value' at the third and
fourth levels too. And its pretty clear that in the end, values are every
last bit of it.
Matt wrote:
"To ignore them is to misread the world." ...If values were the sum total of
reality, if it were used redescriptively, then it wouldn't be possible to
ignore them because you are everywhere and always in touch with reality.
dmb says:
What i'm saying is that values are the "sum total of reality", but that
there is no contradiction between that "redescription", if you must, and an
epistemology that adds a sense of value. I'd guess that the false dilemma
arises from importing SOM's notion of the self, where the five physical
senses are treated as the most reliable of scientific instruments. But the
apparent dilemma disappears when we remember that the MOQ specifically
rejects this kind of materialism. I like to imagine that the preferences
exhibited by particles is somehow identical with its very shape and form. I
mean, I like to think of things like strings, quarks, neutrons, atoms and
molecules as little manifestations of consciousness. Its not the kind of
consciousness we humans can easily relate to, but if preferences are
expressed at the inorganic level, then a sense of value goes all the way
down. This means that physical reality isn't quite the lifeless matter we
thought it was and that levels of perception and the forms in reality are
the same thing. Or as Emerson put it, "Nature is mind precipitated."
Matt wrote:
I think Pirsig uses "value" in two ways, as synonymous with Quality, i.e. in
its redescriptive, ubiquitous sense, and in the more traditional sense of
being synonymous with morals.
dmb says:
He uses it in lots of ways. It replaces "cause" in our physical
descriptions, it refers to a prime cut of beef and a hot sexy babe, it
refers to the social codes of morality, to intellectual explanations and
abstract art. These are only a sketch of the ubiquity of value in the MOQ.
But again, there is no tension or dilemma because of the way the traditional
meanings fit in with the bigger picture.
Matt wrote:
So, in answer to the topic question, "Does Pirsig adequately support his
notion that we have a 'sense of value' analogous to the five traditional
senses?" I think we have to answer in one of two ways: 1) "mu," because we
do not have a sense of value that is analogous to the other senses because
all Pirsig means is his redescription of reality.
Matt continued the thought:
A corrollary of 1) is that we can still keep the sentiment of "Values are
phenomena," despite the fact that it clutters up this passage, when values
are synonymous with morals. I took the entire point of the Quality
redescription to be that values are as real as rocks.
dmb says:
Yea, values are primary, as real as rocks - and rocks ARE values of a
certain kind. Morals are values of a different kind, etc. The hardness and
wieght and solidity of physical objects like rocks are taken to be more real
than morals and other 'subjective' values, but the MOQ says they are not
only just as real as rocks, but they are also a more evolved form of the
same "stuff".
Matt continued:
or 2) no, because if we have a "sense of value" analogous to our five senses
then it would beempirically testable as a physical section in our brains
(like the other five senses) and I severely doubt we find a section in our
brain that senses morals and can be developed or underdeveloped
_physically_.
dmb says:
The "physicalism" of Matt's view is most conspicuous here, but runs
throughout his case. The complaint seems to be that our 'sense of value'
can't be located by neurologists or otherwise dectected by scientific
instruments. But neither can the POTUS. This is just SOM saying its not
really real. As I've tried to explain, I don't think the 'sense of value' is
limited to the workings of a biological organ. But its also true that our
sense of value isn't excluded from the biological level. I mean, the five
sense are replied upon in most Western epistemologies, but if we imagine
that these senses were originally all aimed at getting fed and laid - for
millions of years - Pirsig's description of sex as the central organizing
force of that level is only reinforced. If its true that value is percieved
and preferences are expressed at every level of reality, then we have not
only abandon traditional materialism, we also have a completely different
picture of the self, a different picture of the "agent" of that perception.
Pirsig in chapter 11 of Lila:
"Nothing can have Quality. ...Nothing dominates Quality. If there's
domination and possession involved, its Quality that dominates and possesses
Lila. She's created by it. She's a cohesion of changing static patterns of
this Quality. There isn't any more to her than that. The words Lila uses,
the thoughts she thinks, the values she holds, are the end product of three
and a half billion years of the history of the entire world. She's a kind of
jungle of evolutionary patterns of value. She doesn't know how they all got
there any more than any jungle knows how it came to be."
And this is true for each of us. Each one is created in the same way and is
also a jungle of patterns. Surely each person's sense of value is determined
by the compositon of their particular jungle. In any case, the MOQ rejects
the idea of a lonely and subjective ego peering out at a world of substance
and replaces it with a self that is, in some sense, indentical to the world,
a feature of the evolving static world. So yea, I think the sense of value
makes sense, even if we need to go beyond the SODV quote to get at it. Once
we look at the "sense of value" in the full context of the MOQ I think we
can see that Pirsig is talking about something so completely pervasive
throughout reality that it becomes invisible to us. As it says in the Gospel
of Thomas, "The kingdom of heaven is spead out upon the face of the earth,
but men do not see it." You know, the lotus flower and the gears of a
motorcycle equally.
This implies a kind of "thou art that" Zen mysticism, but that's a post of
its own. (feel free, anyone.) This one is too long already.
So, eat your veggies and stay in school.
Thanks,
dmb
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_focus/
MF Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_focus follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/mf/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jan 12 2004 - 03:31:57 GMT