From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 07:19:27 GMT
Hey DMB,
DMB
> The chapter lists a number of problems, or platypi, that SOM has created
and
> substance is one of these. It is a deduction based on experience, but like
> causation, no one has actually been able to find it. "Substance", he says
on
> the previous page, "is a derived concept, not anything that is directly
> experienced".
RICK
Just a few pages earlier when Pirsig is clearing up the platypus that
'values emanate from the lower brain', he advises us that, "When deduced
entities are around for years and nobody finds them it is a sign that the
deductions have been made from false premises; that the body of theory from
which the deductions are made is wrong at some fundamental level. (LILA ch8,
p115)"
Pirsig is basically saying the "metaphysics of substance" is a body of
theory that is faulty because it is wrong at a fundamental level; And it's
fundamental problem is that it has the fiction of "substance itself" as its
basis. That is, the linguistic shift to 'inorganic patterns of value'
overcomes the metaphysical assumptions about the empirical data by exposing
the fictitious concept of "substance itself" and throwing it out.
DMB
The linguistic shift to inorganic patterns of value, then, is meant to
overcome the metaphysical assumptions about the data, while retaining the
data itself.
RICK
I agree with this comment on its own. But when it's combined with your
assertion that, "...Pirsig's attack is upon a METAPHYSICS of substance, not
substance itself...", you seem to be arguing that Pirsig is saying the
'data' really is of 'substance itself'; An argument which at best fails to
realize the full-promise of Pirsig's redescription of reality in terms of
value, and at worst raises the specter of 'matter' (and thus, all things
SOM). But I would submit to you that this identification of "data" with
"substance itself" is precisely what Pirsig was trying to avoid by
redescribing "substance" as an "inorganic pattern of values" because in a
Metaphysics of Quality, 'empirical data' flows directly from the
pre-intellectual, cutting-edge of reality... Dynamic Quality.
When Pirsig says, "...the difference is linguistic. It doesn't make a
wit of difference in the laboratory which term is used. No dials change
their readings. The observed laboratory data are exactly the same... (LILA
ch8)" he means that the 'linguistic shift' doesn't entail any sort of
corresponding 'empirical shift'. That is, you'll still see the same thing
through the microscope, because the empirical data doesn't change as a
result of the redescription. He does NOT mean that there really is some
mysterious, featureless thing out there called "substance" that he has
merely renamed.
When placed in the greater context of his discussion about scientific
fictions that have been "deduced" from false premises, Pirsig is saying that
"substance", like "causality", and the notion that "values emanate from the
lower brain", are just more examples of scientific fictions masquerading as
"deductions from reality" like phlogiston and the luminiferous ether. They
don't exist, and they never did.
DMB
I mean, we still drink from glasses of water.
> Just because it is held together by a different set of terms, just because
> physical objects are not as solid or persistent as SOM would have us
> believe, that does not meab will be thirsty from now on, if you know what
I mean.
RICK
I do know what you mean. Only now we can all drop the charade of acting
as if the empirical data is clinging to some mysterious thing called
"substance" which no one has ever seen and which has no properties of its
own. Pirsig claims that describing the empirical data in terms of value
confers benefits like "an integration of physical science with other areas
of experience that have been traditionally considered outside the scope of
scientific thought (LILA, ch8 p121)." This is a benefit that becomes too
easily obscured when one describes 'inorganic patterns of value' as
'substance'.
DMB
Pirsig only answers the original question, what is it that holds these
> properties together, in a different way; by getting rid of what Aristotle
> started and re-unifying objects with values.
RICK
It is only by throwing out the bogus concept of 'substance itself' that
Pirsig is able to uproot the 'metaphysics of substance' and re-unify objects
with values.
thanks,
rick
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