[MD] is the hot stove analogy obvious?

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Ron --


On 12/21/09 at 10:46 AM, you wrote to Bodvar, quoting Pirsig:

> "The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism.
> It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses
> or by thinking about what the senses provide."
>
> A reasonable interpetation may be:
> Dynamic experience arises from the senses, Static experience,
> by thinking about what the senses provide.
>
> Again, in the context of the term "empirical" the primacy of the dynamic
> holds the meaning in regard to being "more" empirical than a subject
> object interpretation based on a static intellectual assumption of a
> physically objective starting point. In other words value is more 
> empirical
> than objective reality.

"Empirical" is defined by the dictionary as "relying on experience or 
observation alone."  "Value" is defined as "something (as a principle or 
quality) intrinsically desirable."  So that when (in the context of the MoQ) 
Value is equated with empirical experience, it must be recognized as a 
"special" definition which departs from the common meaning of these terms.

You quote two Pirsig paragraphs, the first previous to this posting at 9:56 
AM:

> "Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through
> imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They
> regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as
> unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying
> that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are
> verifiable, and that in the past they have been excluded for metaphysical
> reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of
> the metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of
> subjects and objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject
> or an object isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this 
> assumption
> at all. It is just an assumption."

Logically, there cannot be empirical evidence for a metaphysical theory. 
But there is empirical evidence for subject/object existence: it is common 
experience.  Value is neither an object or knowledge.  But the values of 
art, morality and religion are immanent to the individual subject (i.e., 
value-sensibility) who projects such values into the objective world of 
experience.  So, contrary to Pirsig's assertion, the reason esthetic, moral 
and spiritual values are excluded or denied by empiricists (i.e., 
objectivists) is empirical, not metaphysical.

> "There's a principle in physics that if a thing can't be distinguished
> from anything else it doesn't exist. To this the Metaphysics of Quality
> adds a second principle: if a thing has no value it isn't distinguished
> from anything else. Then, putting the two together, a thing that has no
> value does not exist.  The thing has not created the value. The value
> has created the thing. When it is seen that value is the front edge of
> experience, there is no problem for empiricists here. It simply restates
> the empiricists' belief that experience is the starting point of all 
> reality.
> The only problem is for a subject-object metaphysics that calls itself
> empiricism."

I agree with this paragraph in its entirety, except that I would not call 
subject-object a "metaphysics" any more than I would call experience a 
metaphysics.  For it is an empirical fact that experience is the subject's 
awareness of an objective reality.

Essentially speaking,
Ham