Postulating an existence of qualia as something distinct from physical reality
But the quote actually was (my highlight again)
It postulates that the fundamental reality is Quality or value.
Nothing dual about that.
The way I read Pirsig, he says that Quality is all there is: it's not distinct from anything: it is anything and everything ie Reality.
You won't find anything resembling "claptrap" in Pirsig's books. You may disagree with what he says, but you shouldn't have any difficulty with the way that he says it.
How other people describe what Pirsig says is up to them, and people often descend into "claptrap": if only everyone were as clear as you, Jake.
But I think you should avoid using "metaphysical" almost as a term of abuse, a bit like the use of "liberal" by political opponents as a pejorative term. What is needed is a good dose of Metaphysics IMHO: we really need to look askance at the assumptions that underpin what passes for our thought.
If anyone else pre-dated Pirsig in his conception of an alternative metaphysics to the conventional post-Greek "subject/object" metaphysics, then please direct me to him or her.
As far as I can see Pirsig's is entirely original thinking, and original thinking is rare. This is once in a thousand years stuff.
But since it brings into question the premises underpinning pretty much the entire academic edifice constructed in the couple of thousand years it's no surprise it doesn't exactly receive an enthusiastic reception... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Oh. My mistake then. But if Quality is simply physical reality, then why isn't he just saying that?
Looking at assumptions is good and right, but I fail to see what metaphysics has to offer as anything other than an intellectual exercise. If it does not make testable statements, then how can it educate our decisionmaking? And if it does make testable predictions, then how is it different from methodological naturalism?
Since I don't know how old Pirsig's writings are, and since I apparently don't understand what they're about, I think I'll retract the statement that he does not make original claims...
As far as I can see Pirsig's is entirely original thinking, and original thinking is rare. This is once in a thousand years stuff. But since it brings into question the premises underpinning pretty much the entire academic edifice constructed in the couple of thousand years it's no surprise it doesn't exactly receive an enthusiastic reception...
But since it brings into question the premises underpinning pretty much the entire academic edifice constructed in the couple of thousand years it's no surprise it doesn't exactly receive an enthusiastic reception...
... but claims of an impending paradigm shift raise little red flags in my mind.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
If it does not make testable statements, then how can it educate our decision making?
I think that what we have to do is to look again at the nature of tests. I really don't know enough about this area, but my intuition is that this Metaphysics of Quality/Value may open up new thinking in relational logic and conceptual frameworks. My problem is that I find abstraction very difficult to cope with intellectually.
And rightly so, but such is the position in which we find ourselves, IMHO.
In particular, the legal concepts of "absolute" property rights are faulty and "broken". We are used to either absolute, infinite "ownership" eg freehold land, shareholder "Equity" or absolute, temporary "use" for a finite duration eg leasehold land, and debt.
These Newtonian assumptions of absolutes are not good enough. They do not explain the ability to utilise assets/Value for an indefinite period which arises from the use of the legal concept I call an "Open" Corporate for the encapsulation of property rights.
I have found in Pirsig's MoQ an approach that allowed me to develop a conceptual framework within which to analyse - at least to my own satisfaction - value events/transactions and their role in economic interaction.
The reason this is important is that there is a "Telluric" paradigm shift going on IMHO based upon the connectivity of the Internet, and it is only defective legal protocols - the "Semantic Web" - that are holding us back.
My thesis is that consensual partnership based solutions are optimal, and the proof of that pudding is in the eating. If I am right in that thesis, then I am curious as to why it should be so. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
i believe that to be axiomatic, so it may not have a 'why'.
does asking 'why not?' help?
why does it need male and female genetic material to create human life?
or should i say 'did'?
the world as one big pulsing consensual partnership sure sounds optimal to me....
if the proof is in the eating, then i can say from experience that when you get a bunch of people together for a project and it goes well, everyone goes home feeling good, bellies full of pudding.
ET is a group project, and induces that sort of satisfaction, if mostly intellectually.
blogging is a new way of relating which creates a forum which in meatspace would need highly unusual levels of respectful discipline and lack of interruption, no one interjecting, each with the freedom to say until the end what one had to say.
and then take as much time as necessary to peruse and reply.
so it's pulling communication out of us that possibly has had no outlet up to now.
i should bear that in mind more, when glitches occur, and flameouts follow.
you knew this was going to get warm, this debate, chris, calling it a punch-up in advance...
and it has been, because this stuff goes deep, very difficult to keep emotions down to lukewarm when discussing concepts like soul.
i see it as lancing a boil, what you did.
not the lounging emperor watching the blood sports below, but peacemaker, through somewhat shamanically allowing passionate emotions space to erupt and spend themselves, bouncing pixels against each other, instead of fur flying and blood on the walls, which is all to often the meatspace outcome when matters of 'faith' are provocatively brought out of hiding, like lions out of their catacomb cages.
can't wait for the next one on art... though i imagine it will be much less emotional...art claims no ticket to houri heaven in the afterlife, more like a pine box and a posthumous price at sotheby's.
though it can save souls... prolly left ole-time religion in the dust in that sense.
unless art is your religion! rumi's poetry comes to mind... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
