From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 13 2005 - 13:21:27 BST
Ian, Matt et al:
Pirsig makes it crystal clear that valuing and experience are inseparable:
"This value is more immediate, more directly sensed than any "self' or any
"object" to which it might be later assigned. It is more real than the
stove. Whether the stove is the cause of the low quality or whether
possibly something else is the cause is not yet absolutely certain. But
that the quality is low is absolutely certain. It is the primary empirical
reality from which such things as stoves and heat and oaths and self are
later intellectually constructed." (Lila, 5)
I liken Pirsig's value to qualia -- immediate apprehensions of vibrations
such as the color and smell of a rose. Daniel Dennet defines qualia
thusly:
Qualia are:
1. ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by
any other means than direct experience.
2. intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not
change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
3. private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are
systematically impossible.
4. directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness; that is, to
experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all
there is to know about that quale.
Isn't that an accurate description of Pirsig's Quality? I think so.
Quality is a sense like other senses. It is what you know before you know
anything else. It is never (to use a favorite word of academic types)
"mediated" by concepts of any kind. It is as plain, direct and self-
evident as the difference between black and white, light and dark, figure
and ground. It is the sense of good and bad.
Platt
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