From: platootje@netscape.net
Date: Wed Jul 06 2005 - 12:18:55 BST
<hampday@earthlink.net> wrote:
>OK, I think I see how you are making "value" the differentiator. And it's
>apparent that you've borrowed the idea from our friend Pirsig, using an
>argument worded very much as he would. Particular things don't exist until
>their values are experienced. Conversely, if a particular set of values is
>not experienced the referent things don't exist. So he says.
Yes, but if I can make an addition, do not automatically asume that something has to be experienced by human beings to be speaking of experience.
>The problem I have with this concept is that values are not sensed in the
>way that things are sensed. For example, the value that Pirsig uses as his
>prototype is "pain". When one sits on a hot stove, it's the "pain in his
>ass" that gets to him first. But pain is a proprioceptive response to nerve
>trauma, not a physical attribute that defines a "thing".
Pirsig doesn't acknowledge physical attributes, and it that sense, pain is just a much real as the stove or the ass, just on a different level.
It's an experience that caused quality to be labeled.
Pirsig goes on to
>call this a "low quality" experience, blithely assuming that his readers
>will now understand what he means by Quality. If the truth be told, the
>author in his elegant simplicity has avoided defining either quality or
>value in an epistemologically useful way.
Please define 'epistemologically usefull'
>
>The breaking down of pure otherness into discrete phenomena is an
>intellectual process [intellection] that is universally communicable . The
>weighing of values involves esthetic sensibility, which is proprietary to
>the self and non-universal.
Values are already weighed. But a value 'beautiful' is much more weighed individually, while a value 'stone' is weighed very long a ago in evolution, and incorporated in other values that have evolved since then.
Equating cognizance of "universals" with the
>sensation of value (or quality) is not a valid epistemology and doesn't hold
>up empirically. It's not a question of which comes first, or where value
>resides -- the perennial debates going on here. Rather, it's the fact that
>Value and Quality are two distinct types of experience.
But you look at value as a distinct from a physical object, hence still supporting SOM, while I believe there will not be found a smallest, physical, dimensional particle. So as Pirsig has stated: 'You can replace particle by value and all laws of nature stay intact' (not a literal quote). This is not just a linguisitc issue. This means that matter=value!
>If I was a newly arrived Martian observing an assembly of fitted wooden
>pieces resting on the floor, I might be inclined to ask: "What's that gadget
>for?" But once I had seen someone sitting on it, I would henceforth know
>its purpose. What does the utility of a chair have to do with values?
In this case the value is chair.
In other cases the values is pile of wood.
They're both true.
>Epistemologically, I recognize a chair by drawing on my memory of similar
>objects and how they are used. In other words, cognizance of phenomena
>depends upon one's capacity to identify particular shapes or structures
>(intellection), one's memory of comparable experiences, and a rudimentary
>ability to associate names (labels) with specific objects perceived. These
>experiential functions can all be roughly categorized as "cerebral".
>
So everything you recognize as something is compared to a mental picture you already have. You have those mental pictures either because of your memory, or because of your genetic ability to recognise dark/light, noise/silence, pressure/no pressure. But still, if you think in values it's all still perfectly explainable. In your life you learn to put values on everything because a picture looks like an already values picture in your mind, or because your organic body has placed value on it somewhere down the evolution (pain).
>Therefore, unless you can convince me that I turn a pile of wood into a
>chair by "valuing" it, I'm sorry to say I can't -- at this juncture
>anyway -- accept your thesis that "choosing to value it separates it from
>its surrounding".
Well in your own example the martians did....
>
>Meantime, perhaps you'll explain the concept you were trying to communicate
>in this extraordinary assertion:
>
>< If in a universe there's an 'A', but nowhere in that
>> universe at no time there's a 'not A' then people
>> will not be able to experience A.
>
>You have me intrigued.
Well not much to explain about it. It's just simply true. And it also predicts something: If you stop valueing (which in my opinion is judging) something, it dissapears.
If you stop judging people on their looks, then handsome and ugly dissapear. I you stop judging people on their wlth, then rich and poor dissapear. If you stop judging materials on their colors, then chess-boards dissapear.
I hope I've shed some light and raised some questions,
kind regards,
Reinier.
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