Hi squad,
John has raised a very interesting point in his forum essay.
I have to take Pirsig's side on this one.
<<<<
When Pirsig says "a thing that has no value does not exist", he is
overstating his case. At a fundamental level all language can be seen as
carrying static value. Most words only form from experiences of value.
According to his logic, if there was no value for me in a word, it would not
become part of my vocabulary. However some words seem clearly functional
without value - the word the will do as an example. The fills a grammatical
role in language, but as a word it is empty of content and equally empty of
value.
>>>>
The MoQ should be regarded as a monism - all is really one. That means that
looking at things as separate entities is something secondary. SOM excels at
isolating entities for examination, and this is exactly what John has done
with the word "the". This merely reveals the inherent problem.
Pirsig subscribes to "radical empiricism" by which the test of something's
value is whether it makes a difference. The word "the" clearly does make a
difference, not as an isolated object, but as part of a sentence. The
difference made does not have to be a "physical difference" as in SOM's
empiricism, but any REAL APPARENT DIFFERENCE without any specific
definition.
Thus, it may be appropriate to call the MoQ a metaphysics of EMPIRICAL
empiricism.
It makes me smile to think of the parallel term for SOM's empiricism.
Jonathan
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