From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Mon May 16 2005 - 17:21:52 BST
Hi Platt
I ought to do a thorough reading of the SODV soon. I particularly like the
following, as it succinctly expresses one of the most valuable lessons about
learning that I learned from Lila:
"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."
I must admit that the extract didn't help me solve my problem, but now that
I read it again, I see that the clues were there: "the senses are the
starting point of reality" - but not ALL of reality/Quality, and that's what
I was struggling to realise.
Regards,
Mike
On 5/12/05, Platt Holden <pholden@sc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> Welcome to the MD. You raise an excellent point:
>
> > According to Lila, Dynamic Quality has driven the evolution of inorganic
> > patterns into biological, social and intellectual patterns. To me, this
> > doesn't tally with ZMM's central thesis that pure (Dynamic) Quality is
> the
> > flux of pre-intellectual awareness supplied by our senses. I accept that
> > social and intellectual patterns "filter" our experience into something
> > more static and less bewildering, but surely our senses are a
> *biological
> > pattern*, and also filter the Quality reality, before the social and
> > intellectual patterns get involved.
>
> Pirsig addressed your point in his paper, "Subjects, Objects, Data and
> Values" (SODV) as follows:
>
> "In the third box are the biological patterns: senses of touch, sight
> hearing, smell and taste. The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical
> tradition here 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. In the
> past this biological sense of value has been called the "subjective"
> because there values cannot be located in an external physical object. But
> quantum theory has destroyed the idea that only properties located in
> external physical objects have reality."
>
> Hope this helps. I'm sure others will welcome you and have something to
> add.
>
> Best,
> Platt
>
> You can read the complete paper by going to mog.org <http://mog.org>,
> clicking Forum at the
> top of the page, then Index of Essays, then the SODV paper under Pirsig.
>
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