From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2002 - 19:43:06 GMT
Hey Jon,
> SAM (quoting Pirsig)
> No objective scientific instrument can distinguish a President of the
> U.S. from anyone
> else....
>
JON
> IMHO this is quite wrong. The simplest "scientific instrument" is human
> observation. The are observable differences between the behaviour of
> different bees in the beehive, nothing unscientific about that.
>
> There are also observable differences in the behaviour of the alpha male
> and other males in a group of apes.
> Furthermore, if you were to film the US President with a group of
> advisors, but blank out all the faces, I think that there would be still
> be clear signs of which one was the President.
IMHO this is quite spurious. First off, I think its pretty clear that by
"objective scientific instrument" Pirsig is referring to NON-COGNIZANT
things like measuring devices (rulers, scales, and thermometers) and
observation aides (microscopes, telescopes, etc). He's simply saying that
there's no ruler you can hold up to a person that will tell if that person
is or is not the 'president of the US'.
Notice, Jon, that to find an example of an "instrument" that can detect a
social pattern you had to cite a human mind (which you mind-bogglingly refer
to as a "simple" scientific instrument). But human understanding is far from
mere observation. It is the end result of an on-going interactive process
of observation, deduction, and induction. That an ape is an 'alpha male' is
not an OBSERVATION. It is a CONCLUSION based on numerous measurements and
observations (behavior, size, levels of aggression, experience with the
significance of various aspects of gorilla behavior). It is far from a
"simple" observation. Pirsig's very point, which you unwittingly
reinforced in your attempted refutation, was that it takes a human mind to
draw those kinds of conclusions. He was saying it takes a social pattern to
recognize a social pattern.
To the microscope, money is just paper with ink on it... It takes a human
being to recognize the same paper and ink is "money". A microscope, and
other scientific instruments, might reveal all sorts of differences between
various samples of paper with ink (i.e.. size, shape, weight composition).
But no microscope, or other "objective scientific instrument" will be able
to tell you that one sample is money, and another is not.
rick
>
> I think that Pirsig is falling for his own trap, by suggesting that
> these differences are unscientific and not objective. You could probably
> program a computer to find the President, which would thus make the
> computer an "objective scientific instrument". However, I think this is
> a red herring. As I first said in an essay on the forum (now rather
> old), when we talk about scientific objectivity, in practice we mean
> reproducibility. As long as the result is reproducible, it doesn't
> matter if the detector is an instrument or a human observer.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
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