From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Nov 23 2003 - 13:22:44 GMT
Scott,
>There is no biological/physical organ involved in
> perceiving value like there is for sight or hearing.
The biological/physical organ involved in perceiving value is known as
"reward circuitry" which is hard-wired in the brain. If you're
interested in finding out more about it, a Google search will bring up
many references.
I subscribe to Pirsig's view that values are phenomena and especially
like the description by Richard C. Vitzthum of how this happens:
"The reductionist equates moral discrimination with sense
discrimination. That is, the ability to sense a difference between heat
and cold, light and dark, acid and alkaline is indistinguishable from
the ability to decide whether this thing, place or experience is -
better- or -worse- than that thing, place or experience. Physical
sensing and moral judgment have from the start been simultaneous and
identical processes, and even the most refined and abstruse moral
reasoning is rooted in the slime and grit of earth's natural history."
(From paper, 'Philosophical Materialism')
Since I regard Pirsig's sense of value primarily aesthetic, I was
pleased to find the following quote from Nancy Etcoff, PhD:
"Earlier studies that I and others have conducted follow evidence that
the perception of beauty is inborn."
I also am especially fond of computer guru David Gelernter's opening
paragraph in his book, "Machine Beauty:"
"The sense of beauty is a tuning fork in the brain that hums when we
stumble on something beautiful. We enjoy the resonant hum and seek it
out. And when we return numb and weary from a round of shovelling the
grim gray snow of life, beauty is the hearth, beauty's the fire,
beauty's the cup of coffee (the fragrance, the saucer's clink, the curl
of the cream) that makes the whole business almost seem worthwhile.
Ponder long enough as you sip and life can turn inside out under your
gaze like a trick profile, and coffee and hearth become the reason snow
exists, and beauty explains the world. Strangely enough, beauty is a
truth-and-rightness meter, and science and technology could not exist
without it. It's tuning-fork hum guides scientists toward truth and
technologists toward stronger and more useful machines. It leads the
way forward."
>The limits of intellectual patterns
> should be seen as the cutting edge of intellect, where DQ is alive and
> present in each of us. That is why I despair of Pirsig for calling DQ
> "pre-intellectual".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in simplist terms you believe in an
immanent and transcendent intelligence which we mortals have partial
access to through our abilities to create and reason. Or, as is often
popularly stated, "We are not humans having a spiritual experience but
rather spirits having a human experience."
Am I close?
And what of your sense of beauty? Does it illuminate your way?
Platt
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