[MD] Static latching & faith

[Scott Roberts]

Platt, Ham, Ant, DMB,

This is mainly to clarify a few things. First, I agree with Platt and the 
MOQ that it makes sense to speak of a sense of value as empirical. Babies 
experience pleasure and pain, not just raw visual, tonal, etc. images. And 
without a sense of better and worse, there wouldn't be any reason to focus 
on some things rather than others. So I'm not arguing against calling 
aesthetic quality "raw empirical data". Before getting to what I am arguing 
about, one remark:

Platt said: "esthetic quality is directly experienced (empirical) and 
pre-conceptual, pre- intellectual."

If this is so, then where does the aesthetic value in doing mathematics, 
science, or philosophy lie? In these cases, one cannot separate an aesthetic 
component from the intellectual. I argue (not in this thread, but elsewhere) 
that on deeper inquiry, all activity has an aesthetic and a conceptual 
aspect -- as implied in the phrase "static pattern of value". But, as I say, 
that's a separate issue.

What I am arguing about on the empirical issue is that I do not see how the 
following claims are empirical:

1. The postulation of an "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" by Northrop, 
which has been more or less carried over into the MOQ as DQ. From what I 
said above, it's not the word 'aesthetic' I'm concerned with, but the word 
'undifferentiated' (the word 'continuum' also raises difficulties, but leave 
that aside). Ant claims that this is empirically based from the argument 
that our clear and distinct sense impressions are surrounded by "vague and 
indefinite" ones. I replied that this just means that there is a range of 
impressions: more or less vague. From that one cannot assume a "most vague", 
i.e., a completely undifferentiated experience. But Ant hasn't replied yet, 
so let's consider this as open.

2. The assumption that aesthetic experience is omnipresent, that is, that it 
applies to all reality, and not just human reality and that of higher 
animals. There is no empirical evidence of aesthetic experience in the world 
of amoebas or atoms, etc. The only reply I've got from this (from DMB) is 
that the empirical data from quantum physics shows that the old Newtonian 
worldview of spatiotemporal value-free determinism is wrong, and that a 
'preference' model of the subatomic world is consistent with the empirical 
data. The fallacy here is that other models are also non-Newtonian, yet are 
consistent with the empirical data (e.g., a non-local determinism), and so 
selecting a preference model is based on a prior assumption, not on 
empirical data.

So I am waiting for responses to these arguments. Bear in mind, though, that 
I am not rejecting these claims. In fact, I agree with them, more or less. I 
am only  rejecting the claim that they have an empirical basis, and so the 
MOQ is not "pure empiricism" as Pirsig claims it to be.

- Scott




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Platt Holden" <pholden at davtv.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Static latching & faith


Hi Ham,

> And while I
> can appreciate the MoQer's need to convince 'physicalists' that reality
> is more than atoms and energy, it is pushing the line a bit to call
> something as ineffable [to use Ant's term] as esthetic quality "raw
> empirical data".

If you have ever experienced beauty (and I'm sure you have) what else
was it than raw empirical data? As the art critic Clement Greenberg put
it:  "Esthetic enjoyments are immediate, intuitive, undeliberate and
involuntary and leave no room for conscious application of standards,
criteria, rules or precepts."  In other words, esthetic quality is
directly experienced (empirical) and pre-conceptual, pre- intellectual.
The recent quote from Northrop (no philosophical slouch) that Ant
provided made the same point. Here's a bit of what Northrop said:

 "And clearly, all that the senses convey are colors and
 sounds and odors, pains and pleasures. These are not external material
 objects.  They are ineffable, aesthetic qualities, the kind of thing
 which the impressionistic artist rather than the physicist gives one.
 Thus again we come to the same conclusion. Pure fact is a continuum of
 ineffable aesthetic qualities, not an external material object."

So, there's something to be said for the aesthetic quality of raw
empirical data.

Best regards,
Platt

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