Greetings John B, Platt, all,
In response to my post on Wittgenstein (Sat Oct 06 2001 - 12:19:49 BST),
John B wrote:
"I am not quite convinced of your suggestion that the value of truth is
subordinate to the values of beauty and the good. If truth is narrowly
defined as an 'academic virtue', then I have to agree, but I see truth used
much more broadly, to refer to what might be termed the 'truth of
experience', in which case I would argue that it is a concern for the truth
that marks out the terrain of 'spirituality'. The word I prefer to use for
the highest level concerns of man is 'meaning', though it too seems partial
and inadequate, and can be narrowly restricted to making definitions. While
I have many issues with Pirsig's MOQ, I find his use of 'quality' an
inspired one, insofar as it clearly points to value, without at the same
time getting mired in social level morality."
More recently, Platt started this Beauty and DQ thread which was touching on
similar things, especially his original comment:
"I also believe there is no greater calling in life than to create beautiful
things. Which is why, long after the politicians are gone and forgotten, the
artists and their works will be preserved and revered. I consider Pirsig to
be a first rate artist. I'm drawn to the MOQ again and again because of its
wonderfully lucid, harmonious and elegant intellectual pattern, especially
compared to the degenerate, postmodern, anti-rational rubbish being
propagated by humanties professors at today's universities."
In this post I'd like to unpack my perspective for John B, and articulate
why I think truth is subordinate to beauty - of course much hangs on the
definition of words - and come back to Platt's point, which I strongly agree
with, and think my overall argument supports.
First element: intellectual truth is subordinate to aesthetic judgements in
science.
I understand truth (and this is really just my definition, it can of course
be defined in alternative ways) to be essentially about the realm of reason,
in particular its coherence and consistency: that is, empirical 'matching'
with the reality of the universe as we find it, and logical rigour, so that
the understanding does not contradict itself. There is a wonderful German
word - weltanschaaung - which means the overall worldview of a person, and I
generally think of 'truth' as meaning how good a fit our rational
understanding or intellect has with the way that the world is. [And I am
aware I'm begging some philosophical issues here, but this isn't the space
to defend every aspect]. Our reason is essentially a tool for renewing that
understanding in the light of experience, so that our understanding can be
continually sifted and refined. Science itself, as Pirsig points out, is a
very effective method for advancing that understanding. However, reason is
insufficient for growth in understanding.
In Thomas Kuhn's 'The structure of scientific revolutions' the point is made
that intellectual patterns (paradigms) don't change for rational causes.
Kuhn looks in particular at the change from the Ptolemaic system to the
Copernican system, and argues that at the time the shift occurred, the
Copernican system was actually less accurate in accounting for the
observable data (positions of the stars) than the Ptolemaic system. This was
because the Copernican system was originally based on the planets moving in
perfect circles, rather than the elliptical orbits which they in fact
follow. The Ptolemaic system, however, built on hundreds of years worth of
empirical observations, and was highly accurate in its predictions. The
difference between the two, however, was that the Copernican system was
extremely simple, and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Ptolemaic system
was, frankly, ugly and cumbersome.
Kuhn of course refers to these alternative perspectives as paradigms, and he
makes the useful distinction between revolutionary science and 'normal'
science. Revolutionary science is the changeover from one paradigm to
another, whereas normal science is working out the implications of one
particular paradigm. Normal science operates according to the fundamental
principles laid out within the paradigm, and follows up all the
consequences, both logical and empirical, that are implied by that
originating framework; revolutionary science is about changing the
framework. I would argue that reason is sufficient for normal science, but
insufficient for revolutionary science.
Kuhn argues that the reason the paradigms shifted was, put bluntly, that the
people supporting the old framework died off, and people who were coming
into the subject freshly and without preconceptions (open to DQ?) chose the
framework that was more aesthetically satisfying. The paradigm shift
followed. So, to summarise this point: reason is insufficient to establish
our fundamental perspectives in science.
Second element: rationality is subject to emotion in our decision making
processes.
This is an area which I covered in some detail in my post on MD Emotions
revisited (Fri Jul 06 2001 - 11:33:33 BST) which talked about Antonio
Damasio's neurological work. To copy in my concluding points: "the relative
truth of the specific elements of Damasio's hypothesis are less important
than the validity of the principal conclusion relating to the impossibility
of separating reason from emotion. As he puts it 'It does not seem sensible
to leave emotions and feelings out of any overall concept of mind'. From the
point of view of integrating this with the MoQ, I would argue that 'emotion'
cannot be reduced to either the biological, the social, or even the
intellectual level. It is a combination of all the different parts of human
being. It would also be true to say that the intellectual level depends upon
the social and biological for both existence and proper functioning."
So to bring these first two elements to a point, I would argue that at the
most fundamental levels, our understanding of the world is not governed by
rational criteria, but by something which I would call aesthetic - a
pre-intellectual, bodily response. Perhaps this is simply a long winded way
of saying Dynamic Quality?
Third element: rational consistency and coherence is beautiful.
In other words, when we are assessing the relative merits of different
paradigms or different philosophies, one that is obviously at variance with
our experience of the world, or one that is internally contradictory, is not
attractive, it does not appeal. Whereas one that does provide a fit with our
experience of the world, which is internally consistent, and which - in the
best cases - provokes a greater illumination in our understanding, this is
deeply attractive. We fall in love with such systems, sometimes to great
cost.
Fourth element: the good trumps the beautiful
I suspect that there is a hard wired organic basis for the previous point,
in that if your understanding tells you that lions will run away when you
scream at them, you will tend to end up as lion food. Whereas if your
understanding tells you that working together with a group of friends means
that you capture the wildebeest that tend to drink from the pond on the
other side of the hill (etc etc) then you will survive and prosper. That is
a high quality outcome (from the point of view of the thinker, not the
wildebeest). I think all our rational understandings are driven by this
primary aim, that we are more successful the more sophisticated and accurate
our world-views become.
Fifth element: the good is primarily communicated through narratives.
This is a point that requires a large post in itself to be supported, but
for the time being I would say two things. One is that, following on from
the previous point, I think we are hard wired to understand things through a
narrative process (think of how to plan an attack on wildebeest). In
particular, when teaching children how to behave within the social sphere,
story is the fundamental method, as it involves the faculties of imagination
and emotion which are necessary to shape the judgement process.
Lastly an aside: our culture is screwed up because it follows what I call
"the meta-narrative of rational primacy" - in other words, a story told
originally by John Locke that if we 'let reason be our guide in all things'
then all will be well. That project is self-destructive and in a very real
sense inhumane (it doesn't recognise that we are not, in fact, wholly
rational creatures - beauty is important to a fully human life). Pirsig, in
my view, has made a very large and fruitful contribution to overcoming and
reforming that project. ZAMM works and is successful on all these levels -
it is a better story than Lila, and much more aesthetically satisfying.
Whereas Lila is (I would argue) a working through of the 'revolution' of
ZAMM, and intellectually more provocative (the MoQ) but actually less
fundamental than the groundwork provided in ZAMM.
That's enough for one post. I'll come back to the links between truth,
spirituality and mystical experience later on.
Cheers
Sam
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