From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 27 2004 - 12:28:13 GMT
Hi all,
My two pennies on this.
I see Pirsig's 'sense of value' as including but not being limited to the
five traditional senses.
Using the baby's learning as a model, the baby first experiences
undifferentiated Quality, and over
time these experiences are segregated into different types, along the five
traditional senses.
However, it seems clear that these are a) experiences along a continuum
(think of the phenomenon of
synaesthesia) and b) that they are high quality derivatives from the primary
sense of Quality. I
like Jay's description, "when Persig illustrates a similarity between the
five senses and the
ability to discern quality, his intent was to establish that quality exists
before, with and after
all of our senses."
I think Pirsig's language in the SODV is unclear, but the above seems most
compatible with the MoQ
as an intellectual structure. I agree with Matt that " It doesn't make sense
at all to say that
there is an additional, sixth sense for value _and_ all the other five
senses are encapsulated by
it."
Interestingly, I see no reason why these five senses should be the only ones
that we have. They are
the senses which are appropriate for engaging with levels one and two of the
MoQ. There must be
senses which allow us to engage with the other levels. For example, a sense
of beauty is not the
same as a visual sense, but it is surely no less real (and equally
distinguishable from the
experience of undifferentiated Quality) than the sense of touch. This would
ground out RMP's idea
that morals are now on the basis of science (ie a sense of level 3 Quality).
A note to Glenn: I think emotions are key to this sense of value, it's at
the heart of my eudaimonic
thesis, but RMP (and others) equate emotions with the biological level. I
think that is a blind spot
in their reasoning.
One last thing - rather than 'flavorative' values, how about 'palatable'
values?
Sam
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