From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Tue Feb 15 2005 - 21:20:29 GMT
Paul,
Paul said:
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'.
Scott:
I appreciate that you are just trying to clarify what Pirsig said, and that
is always helpful, but I can't help repeating my objections (that is, about
his using the word 'empirical' -- I agree with your clarification.)
You say "that ["This value is more immediate, more directly sensed than any
"self" or any "object" to which it might be later assigned"] is why he
claims that art, morality and religious mysticism are empirically
verifiable" What I don't see established, other than by fiat, is that there
is ever any "sense of value" that is not in conjunction with the experience
of some object or event. I can agree that value is more immediate than any
sense of "self", since one is not, or not usually, thinking of one's valuing
something while one is valuing it. But I see no basis for saying that value
is more immediate than that which is valued. If one says that mystics have
an experience of "pure value", then one is arguing from anecdotal
evidence -- the mystics say this -- should we believe them? How can our
choice to believe them or not be considered empirical?
As to the claim itself ("that art, morality and religious mysticism are
empirically verifiable"). This completely ignores the problems of
verifiability. Is satori an empirically verified experience? If so, is an
experience of "Christ within me" also empirically verified? Can one
empirically verify that art is high-quality endeavor? Can one empirically
verify that it is better to kill the germ than let it kill the person? In
short, what does this claim provide in building a metaphysics other than
confusion? One can agree that mystical events occur, and we can draw
conclusions from reports of such occurrences. But to claim that any such
conclusions are "empirically verified" is to create a monstrous confusion.
We can reason out why we think people's lives should trump germs' lives, but
is this anything beyond "what we like"? There are some really deep
ecologists who think it would be better if people disappeared. With what
empirical evidence will one try to convince them otherwise?
The value of the word 'empirical', and also 'objective', is that it referred
to a means of verifiying: shared experience through use of the senses, as
opposed to private experience which cannot be so shared. Granted, if we try
to limit our metaphysics to such shared, sensory experience that we will
have a grossly inadequate metaphysics. We can say value is real, but that
was shown in ZAMM by the argument that if we pretend there is no value, we
are left with nothing at all. That's a good argument. It does not need the
blessing of the word 'empirical'. It just needs saying: we all value things.
To say that value is a 'sense' doesn't help at all. As far as I can see, the
only reason to say it is so one can claim one's metaphysics is empirical,
and the only reason to do that is to sound respectable. Instead, as Wilber
said, it invites mockery.
- Scott
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