[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Ron,

You said about Pirsig and the stove and, if I read you right, 
causality: "It does seem as if Pirsig is heading in that 
direction when invoking the 'more empirical' meaning in 
relation to it."  And then about the world taking on the 
shape it does because of the shape of our minds: "You are 
quite right about that, which really has me questioning the 
validity of Pirsigs empirical notions of dynamic quality in 
relation to immediate experience."

I'm not entirely clear about the particular struggles here, 
but I can tell you that I have _never_ been comfortable 
with Pirsig's "more empirical" claim.  If everything is 
experience, what could it possibly mean for something to be 
"more empirical"?  How can we drive a metaphysical wedge 
between the experience of low quality associated with the 
hot stove and the hot stove itself (a distinction you need in 
order to say the former is "more empirical") when the "hot 
stove itself" is nothing more or less than a set of static 
patterns of quality, meaning that "the experience of low 
quality" is not _associated_ with the stove, but rather _is 
the stove itself_.  Right?

I've never been happy with any explanation given of what 
Pirsig means in that passage.  

Matt


> Ron said:
> Thats what I mean, the causuality of response. still has 
> me hesitant about saying "all" is relative.. I'm still 
> mulling this over..
> 
> Matt:
> Well, that's good at least.  Because Platt used to mean 
> the "low" response was universal, which would then 
> supposedly allow you to construct, as I believe Platt at 
> least used to want to, an actionable universal ethics 
> irrespective of time and place.  I'm not sure Pirsig 
> thought he was deploying the hot stove example simply 
> to describe causality (after all, you could use the 
> example of _anything_ to give an example of causality), 
> but I've always been suspicious of the example.
> 
> Ron:
> It does seem as if Pirsig is heading in that direction when invoking the "more empirical"
> meaning in relation to it. 


> I don't see that a relativist needs to deny causality, but 
> a certain kind might just insofar as noticing that the 
> world takes the shape it does--up to and including 
> notions of causality (notice how Pirsig's argument does 
> _not_ help us here: it is based on the empirical 
> succession of events)--because of the particular shape 
> or cast of our minds.
> 
> Ron:
> You are quite right about that, which really has me questioning the validity
> of Pirsigs empirical notions of dynamic quality in relation to immediate experience.
> A universal foundation is hinted at and it's this that has me grasping at the pragmatic
>  "concrete" in regards to the relativism of meaning and correspondance.
 		 	   		  
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