From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Thu Nov 06 2003 - 16:52:00 GMT
Re: Anthony asks “What are Values?”
Dear David M. and Ian,
I was actually looking for suggestions to the question “What are values?” outside the Pirsigian paradigm.
For instance, maybe one of the Rorty people have such a suggestion?
Anyway, to address some specifics:
David states:
I would like to suggest that values are the reason SQ emerges from DQ. DQ is freedom and
creativity and change and nothing.
Anthony states:
Correct to a point though the first line sounds like a tautology. Moreover, I don’t think DQ is just nothing. Hence, as I note in Section 2.3.4 of my textbook, Pirsig (1996) avoids the Mahayana phrase “nothingness” as it can lead to this confusion.
“The ‘nothingness’ of Buddhism has nothing to do with the ‘nothingness’ of physical space. That’s one of the advantages in calling it ‘Quality’ instead of ‘nothingness.’ It reduces the confusion.”
David states:
To move from nothing to something is to end change. This means that DQ has to
repress its creativity, it has to allow repetition. Why should DQ
do this?
Anthony states:
With the above quote of Pirsig’s in mind, I’d scrap the above lines as they just confuse things and revise the rest of the paragraph accordingly though it is, more or less, on the right lines.
(The rest of David’s paragraph:
DQ allows what it has created to re-occur or to repeat
because it values it, it is worth doing again. SQ is the withdrawing
of DQ or the sacrifice of transcendence to the Given and the Same.
And this movement from the One to the Many leads to bondage
and the loss of freedom. Material existence, and causality, is
precisely the withdrawal of DQ. A rock has little DQ. However,
life is the re-emergence of DQ. Conflict, of course, is therefore
always a conflict of values. The value of being a rock versus
the value of being a human head, unfortunately the rock has more
SQ materialisty.)
Ian states:
I've very nearly finished Northrop, and find the idea reinforced over and over again, that fixing a working assumption as a stated value underlying some scientific theory or religious doctrine is always a transient state. Static, temporarily, for working purposes, but transient none-the-less in the grand dynamic scheme of things.
Anthony states:
This is probably what David was partially getting at but phrased in a better way.
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