[MD] Percepts and Concepts

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Krimel,

Years ago, at an American Philosophical Association meeting, Rorty was 
up on the dais during a symposium on truth and realism, or something of 
the sort, and he suggested to the assembled philosophers that for the 
next year they call a moratorium on the word "truth," and see how their 
discussions get on in talking about the issue of realism and such.

His point was that, from his perspective, talking about truth simply 
muddied and clouded the issue of realism, and stipulatively abjuring the 
term might help focus the one issue, and therefore in the end help focus 
the other.

Krimel, I think you might be on one of those rare "viewpoint staking" 
endeavors that happens every once in a while here (or anywhere), 
whereby a philosopher develops the vocabulary he wishes to illuminate his 
topic.  This is the stage the philosopher is at their most creative and 
frenetic.  This was ZMM for Pirsig.  Lila, on the other hand, was the 
productive stage, in which the vocabulary is displayed in different 
contexts to show off its capabilities.  For instance, in my case, I haven't 
had a real new idea about Pirsig in...five years, maybe.  I've simply been 
working out the consequences of basically the same vocabulary I began 
stamping out in the unfortunately-titled 2003 post "Confessions of a Fallen 
Priest" (unfortunate because I don't think I really started _becoming_ a 
true Pirsigian until that moment).

I have a suggestion for this creative phase of your exploration of Pirsig's 
text: abjure the term "emotion."

The slogan "value is perceived" is terribly important and under-developed 
(because typically still misunderstood with the shades of SOM, which is to 
say, you can't deploy the subjective/objective vocabulary until a significant 
re-interpretation of what either means), but to quickly say following it 
"Emotion is the value," I think, is too narrow, though I see you following up 
on a holistic re-introduction of a concept that has been de-valued since the 
rise of Greek rationalism (the Dark Horse of Plato's Allegory of the Charioteer 
being emblematic).

The notion of a percept/concept distinction is one that Northrop plays with, 
and likewise he too produces something like a reduction of value to emotion 
in his notion of the aesthetic continuum.  Pirsig learns from Northrop, but I 
think his dropping of some of the terminology, in favor of a much broader and 
vaguer term "Quality/Value," is significant and deliberate (and I think right, 
though getting Pirsig right and being right are too different topics--also 
often confused).

My practical suggestion (try formulating your thoughts at this stage without 
the term "emotion" and see what happens) is based on my theoretical 
understanding that Pirsig was right to develop the notion of static levels, that 
it is important to distinguish between different _kinds_ of value (the big, 
vague enveloping term), such as inorganic response (like the mercury rising in 
a thermostat because the room is getting warmer), biological emotion (like 
mother wolf growling at the approach of others to her cubs), and social-
linguistic questions (like the interlocuter who doesn't know what you said and 
asks, "What?").

Emotion, and biological valuing generally, _are_ an important piece to 
understanding humanity's distinctive being-in-the-world, and this because, 
though it does not distinguish us from the animal, it is by virtue of its link that 
it must not be forgotten and recovered in the face of those (mainly 
philosophers) who forget it, usually actively (if unconsciously) in order to 
focus what is different about humanity.  But try holding emotion to one side 
for a time and focus on the consequences of saying "value is perceived" in the 
face of those who, on the one hand, want to reduce value to subjectivity 
(making values an unconversable topic) and, on the other, those who want to 
reduce value to objects (thus making values universally commensurable).

By first understanding what it means for an agent to be both perspective-relative 
_and_ universally _conversable_, I think the re-introduction of how emotion 
figures into our differential responses to the world might become more illumitory 
of our day-to-day life of living (like in your statement that concepts allow "us to 
compare the present circumstances to past events and use those encoded 
experiences of the past to assess the probability of the success or failure of our 
responses"), rather than clouding it (by shading it with the Greek rationalist 
sense that "the real function of conceptualization or rationality is to provide a 
check on our emotions"--the white horse pulling against the dark).

I think your bearings are in the right direction, and are indeed Pirsigian, with the 
larger point of "conceptual systems are communal."  But I think meditating longer 
(and isolatedly) on that larger point might produce (what I take to be) a better 
stance for re-introducing biology, and the rest of the understandings of science 
(physics, neuroscience, etc.).  Because if I read you right, you're laying the 
groundwork (if perhaps unconsciously) for a better understanding of what Pirsig 
meant by the relationship between "levels" and "Dynamic Quality," so that we 
avoid the overly reductionistic vocabulary induced by the apotheosis of babies 
(in which we mistakenly think that we could, or even would want to, free 
ourselves of concepts and remain distinctively human).

Matt

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