From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Feb 15 2005 - 16:03:21 GMT
Scott, all
Scott said:
[W]hat would Wilber think of Pirsig's extending the use of the word
'empirical' beyond the sensory?
Paul:
A brief interjection. As I understand it, it is Pirsig's claim that
value is sense experience.
"The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition...in saying
that the senses are the starting point of reality, but - all importantly
- it includes a sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is
to misread the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or
disliking, is a primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for
everything else an infant learns. At birth this sense of value is
extremely Dynamic but as the infant grows up this sense of value becomes
more and more influenced by accumulated static patterns." [SODV]
"This value is more immediate, more directly sensed than any "self" or
any "object" to which it might be later assigned." [LILA, p75]
This is why he claims that art, morality and religious mysticism are
empirically verifiable, because the essence of all of this experience is
a sense of value. It's just that the values sensed aren't subjective or
objective and have therefore been excluded due to the inadequacy of the
prevailing system of metaphysical categorisation.
It seems there may be confusion here between 'empirical' and
'objective'.
Regards
Paul
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