Hi Marco,
Although there are aspects of your recent formulation that I agree with, it
remains too constrictive. Even within Pirsig's metaphysics it won't fly, and
his metaphysics is inadequate, as I explain below.
You said:
"Better is better
Something is better than nothing
Life is better than death
Together is better than alone
Knowledge is better than ignorance"
"Better is better". I interpret this as meaning that 'quality is'. In other
words we inhabit a universe where quality is not an epiphenomenon, but is
the fundamental value basis of everything. This seems to me to be Pirsig's
main argument, and while I continue to disagree strongly with his assumption
that quality cannot be divided, that it is unidimensional, I have no
argument with his assertion that value matters. To people. Or put
differently, people like us can only occur in a universe where value
matters.
"Something is better than nothing". Says who? This value only obtains in the
context of aware beings who value their existence, which is dependant upon
there being something rather than nothing. (Or so we believe - in modern
physics it would prove hard to define something and nothing unambiguously, I
suspect.)
"Life is better than death". Only half the story. The twin imperatives of
biology are survival and reproduction. In certain cases, death that ensures
survival of a number of close relatives is better than life, at least from
an evolutionary perspective (and this is borne out by numerous otherwise
inexplicable facts).
"Together is better than alone". Inadequate. Together with my worst enemy is
definitely worse than alone. Together within a framework of law is Pirsig's
formulation.
"Knowledge is better than ignorance". Definitely inadequate. We inhabit a
world in which human endeavour has been specialised into three domains, in
which three variants of value obtain. Subjective value has been elaborated
as art; intersubjective value has been elaborated as ethics and morality,
while objective value informs science, mathematics and logic.
Animals have knowledge. (eg they 'know' where to find water, etc) That does
not mean they have reached the intellectual level. Self consciousness
appears to be a prerequisite for this level.
The four levels are useful concepts in a limited sort of a way, but compare
unfavourably with the scheme Wilber presents, which has more levels
organised in terms of a holarchy of human development. He is quite right to
put human development at the core of his system, since in human development
we encounter the highest values accessible to us in nature. And values need
to be interpreted from the top down, starting with the most complex, and
noting where they extend as we examine the less inclusive levels. There is
no future whatever in trying to build values from the bottom up. No amount
of 'is' ever produces an 'ought'. This simple fact actually scuttles the
whole 'evolutionary' form of Pirsig's metaphysics. It is a fallacy.
Finally, the four levels as Pirsig developed them are quite inadequate to
contain the understanding of the mystics. When Pirsig says they contain
everything that is, and are discrete, he is quite simply wrong. Many things
fit uncomfortably into any one level; indeed, almost anything interesting
doesn't. (Try to get agreement from this forum into which level the
following fall: love, terrorism, democracy). And there are many things which
simply fit into none of his levels, such as the essential states (or
attributes) of a human being. Since Pirsig chooses to ignore the mystic
realm, this doesn't seem to bother him.
Where Pirsig goes astray is to believe that values as known by human beings
can somehow be accounted for by an evolutionary or scientific world view. As
he quite rightly notes in his SODV paper, value is ultimately encountered in
here and now experience, and science and evolutionary theory are complex
structures of thought that ultimately derive from that experience. They are,
as he also rightly observes, static derivatives of dynamic value
experiences. Pirsig was big enough to recognise that a 'metaphysics' of
quality is a contradiction in terms. It is a good debating topic. But it is
inadequate as an explanatory system. We can understand why this is so, so
why keep trying to find forms of words that prop up what is an inadequate
system anyway?
Isn't it time to explore what might be the highest values accessible to
people, rather than continue playing with an inadequate evolutionary
'explanation' that really explains nothing?
John B
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