[MD] Static latching & faith

[Scott Roberts]

Ant,

Ant said:
Pirsig argues that "pre-intellectual reality" should be regarded as
primarily an evaluative one because for human survival, 'sense data'
requires constant evaluation; there being an overwhelming avalanche of
facts, sights and sounds that we are exposed to every second.  If all this
raw data wasn't processed:

"Our consciousness would be so jammed with meaningless data we couldn't
think or act.  So we pre-select on the basis of Quality, or, to put it
[another] way, the track of Quality pre-selects what data we're going to be
conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best harmonize
what we are, with what we are becoming."  (Pirsig, ZMM, 1974, p.311)

In reference to a new-born baby's experience, Pirsig (LILA, 1991, p.137)
argues that this data is then constructed into 'subjects' and 'objects' only
after more primitive notions such as 'good' & 'bad', warmth' & 'cold',
'before' and 'after' are constructed:
[etc.]

Scott:
Granted all this, what is the empirical basis for postulating DQ as an 
"undivided continuum"? All experience comes to us divided (e.g., into 
pleasurable and painful, red and black, etc.) Why can't all reality "in 
itself" be divided (pluralism), and so why isn't 
DQ-as-undivided-aesthetic-continuum being taken on faith (or at least as a 
non-empirical assumption)?

- Scott