Hi Peter, Platt, Glenn, Hamish, and all:
I've been following most of your conversations - good stuff and I'm
happy just to read.
However, I do have one comment that I think is important:
PETER
> And my personal estimation of what Pirsig was trying to get at when
atacking
> the sacred cow of "science" was exactly this similar point: that
"science"
> as a world-view may well have proved to be jolly usefull, but we
shouldn't
> let that fool us into thinking that such utility 'proves' that it is
> therefore "absolutely true". this in turn can be taken as an argument
> against empiricism ('radical' or other); but only if one is
stipulating that
> 'proof' is that which establishes the 'proved' as ABSOLUTE. So if one
does
> away with the 'absolute' as a useful concept, one does indeed seem to
be
> left with vague, pop-science-type "field-thingies", or wishy-washy
"anything
> might be right / all things are equal" relative-type
non-judgements....
> Unless one draws the line somewhere, and says something to the effect
of
> "that way lies the abyss, so I'm going to dig in and treat some
particular
> level of concept as 'effectively absolute', and I shall strive to have
> absolute faith in it, and treat it as concrete". My feeling is that
the
> whole of Pirsig's intellectual fireworks were dedicated to addressing
this
> very dichotomy; in proposing "quality" as the fundamental bedrock of
the
> universe, he was actually proposing a vague, indefinable "something"
or
> "field", which is by its very nature scientifically un-disprovable.
Actually, Pirsig's approach is rather ingenious. Firstly, even if we
deny any "truth" as absolute, it doesn't necessarily follow that
"anything goes". Yesterday's truth should only be abandoned if it can be
replaced by a BETTER truth. The only way we can consider competing
truths is where we are still unsure as to which to adopt. The measure of
a truth may not be "provable" in any absolute sense, but there is an
empirical scale by which Man is the Measure. A version of the truth has
value according to the *value* placed on it by common concensus. IMO
that is the Quality idea in a nutshell - measuring truth against the
standard of quality rather than the other way round (see ZAMM).
> Now, OF COURSE one would have to step outside science to make such a
> proposal, and of course therefore one is implicitly curtailing the
capacity
> of a scientific world-view to provide comprehensive explanation of the
> universe, and of course this may just offend those who identify
closely with
> the scientific professions . . .
This comes as no surprise. The perfect illustration is Occam's Razor,
the concept that the "correct" explanation is the simplest one that
accords to empirical observation. This lies at the very foundation of
the scientific method, yet Occam's Razor itself is not a "scientific"
concept in that it cannot be proved WITHIN the scientific framework.
>( I'd remind us all of George Bernard Shaw's : "
> ..every profession is a conspiracy against the laiety"). But the fact
> remains that science's main claim to comprehensivety lies with the
notion
> that, as it were, 'all may eventually be explicable by dint of
assiduous
> application of scientific method'. In other words, empirical PROOF of
the
> efficacy of scientific thinking lies in the future. Which amounts to
> mysticism as surely as self-avowed mysticism!
I see nothing mystical about Occam's Razor, and nothing mystical about
the concept of quality as illustrated by Pirsig's tales from a Montana
classroom. Mystical means hidden and unknowable. We *know* what quality
is, so it isn't mystical.
Peter had a lot more to say in the same general direction, most of which
I agree with, even if I still dismiss the suggestion about mysticism.
Let me end with this curious statement from Peter:
> On the other hand, "quality" is no less vague than various other
entities.
> Use it when it's useful, and discard it when its not...?
When "it" is not useful, does that mean that "it" lacks quality;-)
That makes sense to me in the general sense, but in Peter's statement,
"it" was quality itself!
Nice mind twister Peter!!!
Jonathan
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