[MD] Truth and the Linguistic Turn

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Which only proves when you're challenged and can't win an argument, 
you resort to a personal attack.

[Arlo]
No. It proves, as usual, you squalk about things like "postmodernism" 
without any knowledge on the subject. Your own words prove this. I 
just point it out.

[Platt]
A particular person? Then why does Pirsig write, "Any person of any 
philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without 
any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably 
low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is 
negative." (Lila, 5) Get it -- ANY PERSON.

[Arlo]
Except firewalkers and those with no nerve sensations, I suppose. So 
again, the "absoluteness" of the quality experience is relative to 
the individual. Pirsig's claim here is that the experience of Quality 
precedes intellectual concepts, on that I fully agree. If Pirsig is 
saying that there are experiences that for all people and for all 
time are the same Quality, then I disagree with him. What you call a 
"low quality" experience may be a "high quality" experience to 
others, including standing on hot, burning coals. And what you call a 
"low quality" experience may in fact produce no such "low 
quality-ness" to another without the ability to sense pain as others 
humans might.

But, I will say, if Pirsig is implying that all humans with similar 
biological constucts respond on the biological level to some 
inorganic stimuli in more or less the same way, I would agree. Human 
bodies biologically respond to "hunger" the same way (increased 
stomach acid, energy deficiencies, etc). But each bounded organism 
has its own unique threshold, its own unique responses, and over time 
may come to "experience" hunger along a range of "low quality" to 
"high quality" as this inorganic experience becomes mediated by 
social and cultural patterns.

When this monk sets himself on fire in intellectual protest, do you 
see any evidence that he perceived his experience to be "low 
quality"? (http://www.toxicjunction.com/get.asp?i=V3627)