From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Nov 22 2004 - 02:31:50 GMT
Simon,
> Scott Roberts wrote:
> >Then reason is being treated as a sense. If you want to call it that,
then
> >are you now going to call Spinoza an empiricist?
>
[SM:] > No. Quality is sensed and reason is a term for the methods and
patterns that
> follow this Quality i.e., they comprise intellectual quality. The Quality
> that is sensed is not subordinated to the ideas that follow, it creates
> them. Instead of " a good Idea" the MOQ proposes "idea-like good" or
> intellectual quality.
>
> Spinoza was a pure rationalist. Rationalists say that that which is real
and
> that which can be known is that which can be conceived. He conceived of a
> God with infinite attributes, thus it was real. Empiricists dispense with
> such nonsense.
[Scott:] A few posts back you said this: "Mathematical truths are thus
patterns of values. Value is phenomenal, it is sense experience. Therefore,
mathematical truths are verified by sense experience."
This is what I am arguing against. I brought up the proof of the
mathematical truth that the square root of 2 is irrational, as a
counter-example to the claim that "mathematical truths are verified by
sense experience." If you maintain that the proof is sense experience, then
all rationality must be called sense experience, and so Spinoza's arguments
are sense experience, and therefore empirical. This, of course, is absurd,
so where do you make a distinction between empirical and non-empirical? I
say that mathematics is rational and not empirical. There is an experience
of quality in doing mathematics, but that does not make it empirical, if
'empirical' is to have any distinctive use.
(And rationalists do not say that all that is conceivable is real. A
unicorn is conceivable, but not real.)
>
> >The MOQ states that 'subject' is social and intellectual SQ. So now my
> >question is: what observes SQ?
>
> The search for something that observes something else i.e., exists prior
to
> and is the performer of observation, i.e., a subject is the result of
> subject-object based systems. Why is it necessary for there to be an
> observer?
It isn't necessary. But it is the reality we live in. The reality of "I"
may be ultimately a convention, but in this world, at this time, we speak
of observers and agents. That is how Quality operates at this time. The
question is: not whether one can speak of quality outside of the S/O form,
but whether one can one speak of Quality without any form at all?
>
[Scott prev:] > That is, what is it that has no property
> >other than it observes SQ? If you say it is other SQ, then I ask how do
you
> >observe this observing SQ? If you say that observation is nothing other
> >than SQ/SQ interaction, then I would reply that you are sweeping the
> >problem under the rug (as materialists do), not addressing the question.
>
[SM:]> The question comes from the assumption that there has to be an
observer and
> an observed in order for there to be experience i.e, it comes from SOM. I
> don't make that assumption, I just start with the experience of
observation.
[Scott:] Do you? Isn't "the experience of observation" without an observer
and an observed a metaphysical assumption? Mystics, it is true, claim this
experience, and I accept that claim. But accepting that claim is to accept
the mystic as an authority. It is not empirical.
[Scott prev:] > >But it is known differently. I sense trees, the smell of
coffee, etc. I do
> >not sense something I label value.
>
[SM:] > Then you will have no idea what Pirsig is talking about.
I am not disagreeing with the MOQ in that it says that Quality produces the
experience and the experiencer. What I am disputing is that the MOQ is
justified in calling itself empirical, and the claim you make that
experience is "just value". If I touch a hot stove, I experience pain, not
"value", and I experience pain because I am a biological being. Pain only
occurs in a setting of biological SQ. If there is no SQ whatsoever, there
is no experience whatsoever, S/O or non-S/O.
The MOQ claim that there is "pure experience" prior to any division is
either a metaphysical a priori assumption, or it is an argument from the
authority of mystics. It is not empirical.
>
> All these things I sense have value, but
> >I do not sense it in the way I sense things and events. This puts value
in
> >a category like space or time. Nothing that I sense is space or time,
but I
> >know space and time as properties of what I do sense. As Kant pointed
out,
> >space and time are the conditions for our sensing things and events, and
I
> >would argue that value should be treated similarly.
>
> Look, a newborn child has no idea of categories of space and time or
things
> and events but she cries when she experiences low quality and laughs when
> she experiences high quality. She doesn't need to deduce the metaphysical
> "properties" of experience to work out that there is something which she
can
> label as "quality".
I wasn't saying that one needs the concepts of space and time to experience
things spatio-temporally. She also has no category "value". She cries when
she experiences hunger or a wet diaper, not when she experiences something
called "low quality". And there has to be a baby with all its biological SQ
there for there to be any experience at all.
- Scott
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