From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Nov 12 2003 - 23:11:07 GMT
Hi Nathan,
> I play the market and have something called LEVEL II service. At times I sit
> in awe watching as the information I am getting from the screen updates
> itself. I can't believe that all of this is "just" or "merely" a series of
> on and off switches. Or to give another example, I have trouble
> comprehending that a film that I can have an emotional reaction to,
> essentially is made of light and dark pixels that are put together in an
> organized fashion to create an image on a flat surface.
>
> Or a novel is made of letter of the alphabet organized into sentences which
> are organized into paragraphs which in turn are organized into chapters. At
> the end, the whole is much better and richer than the sum of the parts.
> Letters can't make me feel angry or induce tears to come to my eyes. Or can
> they?
>
> But the novel is an illusion, as is movies, as is the information on the
> price of the stocks I follow. Our brain takes in the information from a book
> or a theatre screen or a computer screen and makes sense out of it because
> it is hard wired to do so.
Why say that they are illusions? I think you were right when you said that
the "whole is much better and richer than the sum of its parts." A living
being for example is made of atoms just like rocks are but a living being
is qualitatively different from atoms or rocks.
> Does this conflict with your view of how things work in the universe? That
> is, how do you feel about the fact that the human brain gives meaning to
> information?
You suggest that the objective view shows us that all our loves and hates
and joys and sorrows are illusions, and meanings and purposes are illusions
as well. I suggest that the objective view's failure to explain these
aspects of experience is a problem with the objective view. The scientific
lens will never show you values, since science values value-free inquiry.
The problem isn't that values are illusions, it's that the lens of science
filters them out.
Remember that you are choosing this objective view over other possible ways
of thinking about your experience. You've made a value judgment in choosing
this objective view. You'd then have to conclude that there is no reason to
look at the world objectively either since the value of doing so isn't
objective.
You say our brains are hard-wired to make sense of information, but why make
sense out of information? You say you subscribe to Darwin's natural
selection or survival of the fittest, but why survive? Here SOM science
gets stuck, because we can't avoid talk of values. In a value-free
understanding of the universe these questions can't be answered, but with a
"principle of betterness" things falls into place. Why make sense? Because
some explanations are better than others. Why survive? Because life is
better than death.
Objective science's goal of denying values is self-defeating. You can't
argue that viewing the world in terms of material objects and causes and
effects is worth doing without making a value judgment. I'm not knocking
objective science. It's a great tool applied to the right kind of job, but
the value-free scientific lens simply can't give you the whole picture. On
the other hand, while a value-based Metaphysics of Quality includes values
while it also contains the results of science as high or low quality
explanations based on a high quality method of inquiry.
ZAMM doesn't suggest that we should deny the results of science. You can
continue to enjoy NOVA. But we should consider scientific theories in the
context of Quality so we can avoid the absurd position of denying the
existence of art, morals, and values and our own consciousness. In short,
once you make Pirsig's Copernican shift, it is subjects and objects (rather
than values) that are emergent properties, and when you do, the picture you
get holds together much better than the one you get from the lens of
objective science.
Regards,
Steve
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