Notes on Lila by Robert pirsig
very related to previous book only Pirsig is coming at it from the other side. He argues that we can know the world, we are just attempting to know it with the wrong tools. He argues that it is through the recognition of the role of quality as in the quality that something (or experience) has. Everything thing has value and quality given by us to it and that's what makes it. Not the other way around, the thing doesn't exist and then we decide its quality. So, from this perspective we do understand and know the world, it is the one of experience and not the one of empiricism. Empiricism says we don't know that which we can't measure. Metaphysics of quality says we do know the quality of everything.
To quote Pirsig, "reality, which is value, is understood by every infant. It is universal starting place of experience that everyone is confronted with Ll the time. Within a metaphysics of quality sience is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe", p. 103
pirsig argues that we should use the word value instead of cause. So if we were to say that a magnet cause iron fillings to come to it, we would instead say iron fillings value magnets. Such a replacement acknowledges that these are not laws but preferences which is what quantum physics argues, particles prefer to do things but we don't know for sure what they will do.
Science, to pirsig, becomes a study of stable patterns of value and the social sciences actually start to make sense. We can't measure "mind" but we can experience it as stable patterns of value. Similarly
with culture, mental illness, etc.
P makes a distinction between static and dynamic quality as the factors of the reality of value rather than subject or object. As far as I can tell static is the property of pattern and repetition and of stasis; dynamic then is the property of change. Static things become perceived as objects and we forget their
dynamism so we start thinking they are primary objects but when our perceptions are disrupted we recognize their real primary quality as static or dynamic. We need a tension between static and dynamic to fend off chaos and to perpetuate change.
"Beauty is things being just what they are", p. 130.
There are four distinct, static, non-continuous systems: inorganic, biological, social and intellectual.
We can sort out values according to this classification system and those the notion of value looses its
vagueness. The value that holds a glass of water together is an inorganic value, the value that holds the water together is biological, the value that holds a family together is social.
In the metaphysics of quality, to the extent that you are controlled by static patterns of quality, determinism rules; to the extent that you are able to exercise your own choices you are following dynamic quality. Whatever is at the higher order or evolution with more dynamic quality takes precedence against lower forms. The highest order is that with intellectual value because that's what furthers our ideas which push us onward and upward.
Social quality is less threatening than intellectual quality. Social quality is more static and does a
better job of maintaining order and resisting change/order. But, as we've moved forward and towards intellectual quality, we are faced with it's dynamic nature which is unsettling and disruptive. This brings change but it also brings chaos and people, particularly conservatives, resist it, focusing on social quality and its static nature and resisting intellectual quality and its dynamic nature.
Criticism: in looking for how the philosophical community views this work, it seems to be overwhelmingly negative with the most constructive criticism being that he misunderstands and/or oversimplifies similar work by more thoughtful and better respected philosophers. What he raises, I suppose, for the layperson is the idea that the subjective and objective distinction are unable to account for all our experience, something phenomenology attempts to address as well.
pirsig argues that we should use the word value instead of cause. So if we were to say that a magnet cause iron fillings to come to it, we would instead say iron fillings value magnets. Such a replacement acknowledges that these are not laws but preferences which is what quantum physics argues, particles prefer to do things but we don't know for sure what they will do.
Science, to pirsig, becomes a study of stable patterns of value and the social sciences actually start to make sense. We can't measure "mind" but we can experience it as stable patterns of value. Similarly
with culture, mental illness, etc.
P makes a distinction between static and dynamic quality as the factors of the reality of value rather than subject or object. As far as I can tell static is the property of pattern and repetition and of stasis; dynamic then is the property of change. Static things become perceived as objects and we forget their
dynamism so we start thinking they are primary objects but when our perceptions are disrupted we recognize their real primary quality as static or dynamic. We need a tension between static and dynamic to fend off chaos and to perpetuate change.
"Beauty is things being just what they are", p. 130.
There are four distinct, static, non-continuous systems: inorganic, biological, social and intellectual.
We can sort out values according to this classification system and those the notion of value looses its
vagueness. The value that holds a glass of water together is an inorganic value, the value that holds the water together is biological, the value that holds a family together is social.
In the metaphysics of quality, to the extent that you are controlled by static patterns of quality, determinism rules; to the extent that you are able to exercise your own choices you are following dynamic quality. Whatever is at the higher order or evolution with more dynamic quality takes precedence against lower forms. The highest order is that with intellectual value because that's what furthers our ideas which push us onward and upward.
Social quality is less threatening than intellectual quality. Social quality is more static and does a
better job of maintaining order and resisting change/order. But, as we've moved forward and towards intellectual quality, we are faced with it's dynamic nature which is unsettling and disruptive. This brings change but it also brings chaos and people, particularly conservatives, resist it, focusing on social quality and its static nature and resisting intellectual quality and its dynamic nature.
Criticism: in looking for how the philosophical community views this work, it seems to be overwhelmingly negative with the most constructive criticism being that he misunderstands and/or oversimplifies similar work by more thoughtful and better respected philosophers. What he raises, I suppose, for the layperson is the idea that the subjective and objective distinction are unable to account for all our experience, something phenomenology attempts to address as well.
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