Hi Platt,
You are absolutely right that Pirsig is an empiricist. He believes that a
physical reality exists that can be observe. But...continued at end of
your e-mail....
----- Original Message -----
From: Platt Holden <pholden@sc.rr.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 1:59 PM
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
> 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."
GARY: I agree!
>
> 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.
GARY: I agree that the map in Lila focuses on DQ & SQ. I agree completely
with this map. I am only re-arranging the coordiantes of the map to address
a different question than the one Pirsig was addressing when he derivded his
map in Lila.
>
> 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
GARY'S RESPONSE: Pirsig is not a 'strict' or 'narrow' empiricist. Ronald
DiSanto one the co-author's of "A Guidebook To Zen and the Art..." came up
with the tantalizing term 'inclusive empiricist' to describe Pirsig. Pirsig
combines the classic epistemological trinity of sense experience,
understanding and reasoning with the romantic epistemological trinity of
feeling, intuition and will [pg 174 of DiSanto & Steele's Guide To]. My
remarks were fighting back against Scott's challenge that if a thing can not
be sensed it did not exist. Scott said "The third level is not examinable
by the senses. How can I taste, see, hear, smell, or touch the act of being
arrested?" The feeling I was getting from the tone of Scott's attack on my
position was that if it can not be sensed then that thing can't exist.
Which is what a narrow or strict [whichever label is the correct
academically used one] empiricist. Pirsig believes in things beyond the
sense, hence he is not a narrow/strict empiricist.
It seems clear by the briefest analysis of Pirsig's writing which I did in
my August 4th 11:16 am post, does demonstrate that Pirsig considers the 4th
level to be equivalent to the mind. And a clear reading of Lila and ZMM
shows that Pirsig believes that we have a mind. Minds and non-minds, this
recognizes the existence of Internal [to the mind] and External [to the
mind]. Pirsig builds his maps in order to explain the structure of reality,
by way of answering the questions: What is reality made of? How did it come
to organize itself? What is it's nature? Thus his answer of it all starts
with Quality.
I believe this is all true. I am interested in asking the question: How do
you come to know the structure of reality? That question yields a map of
reality that focuses on the process of gaining knowledge. Thus my map builds
out from inside a mind. My map focuses on internal/external,
private/public, words/things, maps/territory. What I am doing is
re-arranging the parts of Pirsig's map in order to answer a question other
than the one Pirsig asked and answered. I never intend to violate the rules
of MOQ I just am shifting its focus.
As I stated before one of the Subject/Object Metaphysic problems that
Pirsig's map resolves is the mind/matter problem. The notion that
mind-Subject is somehow a different substance/thing than matter/Object
and hence the two are separate substances and that the structure of reality
must divide everything into matter and non-matter. Pirsig resolves this and
replaces it with Quality as the primary existing thing that then manifests
into stable patterns of itself. Hence Quality is found in matter and
non-matter. There exists forms of quality that is inorganic matter, forms
of quality that is organic matter and forms of quality that is "Social"
patterns and lastly forms of patterns that are "Intellectual".
Now this leaves us with where to locate in the empirical based world Social
and Intellectual. When I follow the process of how we acquire knowledge I
find that I must use words like internal/External, public events or public
things, and private events and private things. And once I realized that
Pirsig uses mind and mental as synonyms for his Intellectual 4th level, it
all became quite simple. Internal & External are map coordinates related to
a Individual's mind. Private is what is experienced inside a mind, public
is the interactions between humans and it is the act of communicating,
making a internal thought or feeling publically known.
I have shifted focus in my MOQ map. I have not abandoned the MOQ
principles. I have shifted the focus and hence the map coordinates in order
to examine a question that Pirsig was interested in ZMM but was no longer of
interest when he wrote Lila. My map is more of a ZMM map than a Lila map.
My primary interest at least in this thread and most of my statements so far
on this site has been on questions of how we acquire knowledge and hence
more ZMM focus than Lila focus.
The map that Pirsig really gives us in ZMM, as I explain in my first essay,
looks like this: The words in the [ ] brackets are Pirsig Lila terms.
QUALITY
(Objective Reality)[Dynamic Quality -- Static Quality]
Matter [Inorganic & Organic Patterns]
(Planet Earth)
(trees and people) [with the advent of people you get the Social level]
QUALITY EVENT
a human mind [Intellectual level]
(Subjective Reality)
(preintellectual experience & awareness)
(intellectual distinguishing
and understanding identifiable things)
Romantic Quality -- Classic Quality
Which is the map I have always been exploring.
Scott seems to be looking at the MOQ map through Hinduism sunglasses. By
that I think he is saying that there exists only Quality. Any talk about
matter or minds is Maya, an illusion. Matter and minds don't have real
independent existence. Only Quality exists. I, and I believe Pirsig does
too, believe that Quality is the underlying nature of all things, it gives
all things their structure. But the outer form of that structure is real.
That outer form is matter/energy and the mind. Those outer forms are not
illusions. This is the key point to which I have been unknowingly knocking
my ideas against. I believe that Scott disagrees with the outer forms of
Quality as having a reality. Scott seems to be using Hindu sunglasses and
thus saying that all talk about outer forms, about substances other than
Consciousness/Brahman/Quality is an illusion.
Gary
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