[MD] Julian Baggini Interview with Pirsig

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Scott.

First of all thanks for your info on the subject/object dualism of 10 
Jan. where you wrote:

> The words (or Latin equivalents) were used in the Middle Ages, but
> with a different meaning for "subject". "Subject" referred to what
> "underlies" phenomena, so it was pretty much the essence of something.
> Hence, being good Platonists, until modern times, "subjective" was used
> for "real" truth, and "objective" for "apparent" truth. 

Your great knowledge is much appreciated. About 
the subject and object being the opposite from the "modern" 
understanding  - more like the original Platonic one - I notice. 
IMO this kind of dividing experience is the 4th level, the "original
participating" era  (3rd. level) knew no such exercise.          

> This all
> got changed, of course, when essences were thought to exist only
> within the human mind, that is, after nominalism took over. What
> modernists call subject and object was not unknown to them, though
> they generally argued the issues involved in terms of soul and body.

Well worth noticing too.

Now to yours of 14 Jan:
 

> Bo quoted Pirsig:
> >     "The foundations are okay, in fact they are rock-solid, but we
> >     never got to discuss them".
 
> > They are, but if Baggini would have been much wiser?

> Scott:
> Are they? Granted that value is real, how does one get from that to
> saying that value is the ultimate constituent of everything? 

The initial postulate Experience=Value is (as postulates goes) 
neither probable nor improbable, but if it leads to a more reliable 
explanation of "experience" than the current one it's foundations 
are okay". The trouble is that nobody knew of any foundations for 
SOM, it's taken as granted.      

> For
> example, if there was once nothing but inorganic patterns, how do we
> know they were inorganic patterns of value? Why couldn't value have
> emerged from a value-less universe? 

We know because the MOQ says so. I don't know if you ask the 
same (silly) question as David M. (how the Q-evolution could 
have proceeded before Pirsig) or it is some even sillier one ;-) but 
if the first static latch is seen as a VALUE latch, it must 
necessarily have emerged from/in a VALUE universe, that's 
plain.    

> (Please note that I am playing
> Devil's Advocate here, since I happen to agree that value, aka
> consciousness, aka intellect is omnipresent, but I am under no
> illusion that I can make this self-evident to the skeptic.)

Here is your old idea that "intellect" means consciousness and 
consequently that the 4th level is a dynamic realm where 
everything is, has been, and will remain, but as said this logic is 
faulty ("intellect" is not such defined) "consciousness" is SOM's 
self-congratulating self-image; a mind that alternately creates the 
world or regards it objectively.

I wonder who you think you agree with " ... that value, aka 
consciousness, aka intellect is omnipresent"? 

Bo