[MD] Reductionism

[Ham Priday]

Krimel and All --


[Marsha quotes Pirsig]:
> "Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific 
> deductions
> that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the
> cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical 
> procession."
>      (LILA, Chapter 29)

 [Krimel]:
> The problem with this is that Values are perceived. They are our emotions,
> Being moved by our values is a response to our emotions. I think it is bad
> mojo to claim that emotion is the primary stuff of reality.
>
> Also I think it is very different to say that an understanding of subject,
> objects or anything else spring from Value and quite another to have crap
> just popping in out of nowhere as a product of experience.
>
> I would totally agree that emotional commitment is required for decision
> making but that does not make it the primal metaphysical existent.
>
> It is indeed on the leading edge of experience. We do not have enough time
> to respond to the environment on the basis of reason. If our species had
> begun that way, our line would have died out long ago. Rational thinking 
> is
> a secondary process that is added to the capacities of primates of our
> lineage. It serves to evaluate, refine and improve actions based purely on
> experience or emotion. Rational concepts are secondary but mighty useful.

I gave up trying to argue with you months ago.  Since then most of your 
posts have compared various philosophers with William James.  They are 
dissertations of the kind that Pirsig would call "philosophology".

But I have to say I'm impressed, and quite surprised, by the recent stance 
you have taken with Ron and John.  In particular, I call attention to your 
statement: "The problem with this is that Values are perceived."  This is 
probably the most significant observation anyone has made here in recent 
years.

Indeed, you have expressed the problem I have with Pirsig's philosophy. 
Values are perceived; they require a sensible agent to realize them.  Man is 
the subjective agent, and his response to value is emotional.  I've said 
before that "unrealized value" is an oxymoron.  It simply doesn't exist. 
The source of value does not reside in the empirical world or in man's 
intellect.  The sense of value is proprietary to the individual and cannot 
be realized without it.

Yet, Pirsig has posited Value (or its epistemological equivalent, Quality) 
as the fundamental reality -- the reality of nature and the universe as well 
as man's sense of morality.  In one fell swoop he has renamed what 
philosophers and theologians throughout the ages have called God or the 
Creator.  He doesn't define it, he says, because "everybody knows what it 
is" and because metaphysical definitions only "destroy the concept".  Had he 
attempted to do so, he would have discovered that epistemology does not 
support his euphemistic concept.

Undeniably, the ability to realize value is fundamental to man's material 
progress and spiritual fulfillment.  But value theorized as "the primal 
metaphysical existent" is a major flaw in the MoQ.

Now that we are aware of this error, what do you suggest we do about it?

Respectfully,
Ham