From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Nov 17 2003 - 13:21:45 GMT
Hi Rick:
> PLATT (previously)
> > Maybe Scott and Matt balk at "analogizing" (now there's a word for
> > you) all truth to sense perception. But Pirsig has no such hesitation:
> >
> > "The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is call empiricism. It
> > claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or
> > by thinking about what the senses provide." (Lila, chp 8)
>
> RICK (momentarily emerging from lurker-mode)
> Hi Platt. I am curious to know why you think this quote is inconsistent
> with what Matt and Scott were saying. Pirsig says that all legitimate
> knowledge arises from the senses OR by thinking about what the senses
> provide. Matt and Scott are simply pointing out that the correspondence
> theory of truth works only with knowledge of the former type and not
> with knowledge of the latter type. How do you see Pirsig's quote as
> contradicting that?
Good question. Pirsig's intellectual patterns are grounded in and
emerge from tangible lower patterns such as hot stoves, iron filings
and stray dogs. By contrast, Matt and Scott's intellectual patterns
spin endlessly around other intellectual patterns such as narratives,
intersubjective agreements, and contradictory identities. Pirsig's
knowledge is rooted in direct experience; Matt's and Scott's
"knowledge" floats on a sea of words.
Another way to draw the contrast is to use S.I. Hayakawa's abstraction
ladder which begins at the bottom with a cow we perceive: not the word,
but the object of experience. The next step up the ladder is to
"Bessie," the name we give to the cow we perceive. Then it's up to
"cow," then up to "livestock," then "farm assets," then "asset," and
finally "wealth" at the top of the ladder. If one rarely connects upper
level abstractions to lower level sense data, concerns like how many
angels can sit on the head of pin can easily become the focus of
knowledge as it was in the Middle Ages.
Or, to put it as simply as possible, for Pirsig there is always a
territory, for Matt and Scott it's mostly maps about maps about maps..
Pirsig accepts the positivist's (scientific) view that all knowledge
must come from data provided by the senses, but adds to the other
physical senses a sense of value that tells us that "some things are
better than others." From that basic premise, he builds the MOQ.
Hope this helps.
Platt
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