Hi Gary:
> If you are a strict empiricist then you should read or re-read Zen and the
> Art. Pirsig, not the first and not the last, who has shot down that
> belief. It seems obvious that Quality exists even though it can not be
> directly seen, tasted, touch, etc.
Pirsig not a strict empiricist? Perhaps you should read or reread LILA
because Pirsig flatly denies your allegation that he has "shot down that
belief."
"The Metaphysics of Quality restates the empirical basis of logical
positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory
power than it has previously had. It says that values are not outside the
experience that logical positivism limits itself to. They are the essence
of experience. Values are more empirical, in fact, than subjects or
objects." (5)
After Pirsig describes the reaction to sitting a hot stove, he writes:
"But that the quality is low is absolutely certain. It is the primary
empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat and oaths
and self are later intellectually constructed."
Furthermore, in the SODV paper, Pirsig states that Quality is indeed
directly sensed:
"The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition here in
saying that the senses are the starting point of reality, but -- all
importantly -- it includes a sense of value."
Unlike your divisions of mind/matter and external/internal, the empirical
basis of the MOQ is Dynamic and static Quality. If you wish, you can
continue to use your divisions to support your intellectual patterns. But
they are not the divisions that form the basis for the intellectual patterns
of the MOQ.
Finally, you ask where values are experienced. They are experienced
i.e., sensed by organic (and some believe inorganic) value patterns. In
the MOQ, you and I and everyone else is, like Lila herself " . . . a kind
of jungle of evolutionary patterns of value."
It seems to me you're trying to squeeze the MOQ back into the bottle of
SOM with your talk of internal mental things and external material
things.
But I could be wrong.
Platt
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