[MD] in defence of the "relative"

[craigerb at comcast.net]

[Matt] 

> How does one know that you're responding, 
> first, to "low quality" and only later to "a hot stove," 
> and not the other way around? 



We are aware of the order & content of our experiences. 
In Pirsig's example we respond first by jumping without 
conceptualizing, then by recognizing/conceptualizing 
why we jumped. 

We could change the example:  You're sitting on a stove 
that someone is turning on, you think "I better get off 
before I'm burnt", but don't jump until you realize it's 

getting hot enough to burn you.  In this case both 
experiences are conceptualized but you recognize the 
cause before the response. 
  
[Matt] 
> why is "low quality" not a concept you place over 
> the experience? 

It is, of course.  But the point is that your unconceptualized 
response comes before this conceptualization. 

[Matt] 
> It doesn't seem, however, that you 
> can do anything to the "unconceptualized experience" 
> other than call it "unconceptualized" 

No so, you can respond to it prior to any conceptualizing. 

[Matt] 
> This seems to 
> suggest that what is more empirical are inorganic and 
> biological static patterns, since it's the naming, or 
> social/intellectual pattern, that needs to be teased out.  
> Or, in Pirsig's reframed senses of the terms, 
> "objective" (inorganic/biological) static patterns of 
> quality are more empirical than "subjective" 
> (social/intellectual) static patterns of quality.  And tell 
> me how _that_ is not backsliding into the S/O Dilemma. 

The levels are meant to clarify the relation of objective patterns 
& subjective patterns.  I don't see how this reintroduces a dilemma. 


[Matt] 
>  how can something be "more empirical" than something 
> else when everything is an experience? 

You've already identified 2 ways: 
1)  Unconceptualized experience is more 
empirical/fundamental than conceptualized, 

since concepts are derived from their underlying experiences. 
2) inorganic patterns are more empirical/fundamental 

than the biological patterns that evolve from them (& so on 
up the other levels). 
Are you looking for a 3rd way? 



[Matt] 
>  How can "low quality" be _different_ than the stove, 
> when all the stove _is_ (in Pirsig's special sense of being, 
> in which DQ "is not") is patterns of quality (and the "hot" 
> pattern giving it a "low quality," as it were)? 



It is not the "hot pattern" that is of low quality.  It is the 
human experience of touching a too hot pattern that is 

of low quallity.  The "hot pattern" is a high quality 
environment for human cooking. 
Craig