Platt and all,
PLATT:
Since science cannot touch the domain of values, and yet, as you
admit, we posses a sense of quality that is a genuine perception, it
appears something besides mind is missing from science’s
“universe,” leaving Pirsig a wide open field to explore. That he treads
on some scientistic toes while doing so should not come as a
surprise.
I'm glad you said "appears", because it could very well be that DQ is
not needed to explain why we sense quality as a genuine perception. It
could very well be that the brain creates a sense of quality. Or it could
be that the DQ idea is right, afterall. It's just a bit odd that there
isn't a more lively discussion about this on moq.org.
Pirsig claims values are not created in the brain, but his reasoning
is merely that science hasn't found them there. If we're going to
criticize scientism for claiming God doesn't exist because scientists
haven't found God, shouldn't we criticize Pirsig equally for his claim?
DQ is just a guess, a guess that is no better (in some ways worse) than
the guess that our sense of quality is created by the brain.
Pirsig writes about the inability of science to pin-point a location in
the brain where quality resides and then writes:
PIRSIG: (ch. 8)
Persons who know the history of science will recognize the sweet smell
of phlogiston here and the warm glow of the luminiferous ether, two
other scientific entities which were arrived at deductively and which
never showed up under the microscope or anywhere else. When deduced
entities are around for years and nobody finds them it is a sign that
the deductions have been made from false premises; that the body of
theory from which the deductions are made are wrong at some fundamental
level.
Ironically, DQ is also a deduced entity that has the same sweet smell of
phlogiston and warm glow of ether. DQ is a thing floating around the
universe (like the ether) having no properties (like the ether) that can
be detected by no instrument (like the ether). This seems pretty damning
to me but I can anticipate two weak protests about this:
1) DQ is empirical - experienced by people, whereas the ether was not.
- Yes, but this is begging the question that the thing we experience as
quality is DQ, and not some epiphenomenal creation of the brain.
2) DQ does not pretend to be a scientific entity, so it does not have to
answer to the standards that would suggest it is fundamentally wrong.
- This is a retreat which does nothing to improve the argument for DQ. It
just mystifies it.
Also, if you were impressed by Pirsig's appeal about the aesthetically
unpleasing position of the platypus in the biological taxonomy, then
shouldn't you be equally unpleased about the quality taxonomy. Here we
have a nice progression of values marching through the inorganic,
biological, social, and intellectual levels, which includes everything.
Everything, that is, except DQ. It's off on its own over here, an
undefined oddball, a lot like the platypus.
Finally, there's this business about DQ creating substance during quality
experiences. There's no empirical evidence for this, and it contradicts
science because a rock that you create and which you claim to be several
minutes old can be carbon-dated and shown to be several million years old.
Also, this idea of humans creating substances like rocks on-the-fly
contradicts another part of MOQ, which states that the inorganic level
evolved and pre-dated humans. In this case either evolution is wrong or
the creative power of DQ is not true.
Glenn
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