Commentary on Chapter 8 of Lila - An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig
I’ve lost the original transcript for chapter 8 commentary. However, since I recorded these videos over a year ago, my thoughts and feelings about Lila have evolved. So, it will not be uncommon for my article, re: whatever chapter I present in this Substack series, to be markedly different from what I present in the video.
“If a thing has no value it isn’t distinguished from anything else.”
Let’s start with the opening paragraph, which not only sums up in a way the conclusion of ZaMM’s philosophical element, but presents us with a framework forward into a new way of seeing:
“The idea that the world is composed of nothing, but moral value sounds impossible at first. Only objects are supposed to be real. “Quality” is supposed to be just a vague fringe word that tells what we think about objects. The whole idea that Quality can create objects seems very wrong. But we see subjects and objects as reality for the same reason we see the world right-side up although the lenses of our eyes actually present it to our brains upside down. We get so used to certain patterns of interpretation we forget the patterns are there.”
The MoQ worldview is oriented from the bottom up beginning with the “big bang”, and from top down (or if you like, inherent in everything) Dynamic Quality. This is in contrast with a smaller scale metaphysics of objective reality, subject object metaphysics (SoM). This lesser metaphysics is an unbelievable tool, but a tool nonetheless nested in a greater and all-pervading value – Quality. But to make the switch requires a whole new way of seeing, and Pirsig provides a metaphor for this process.
What I adore about this chapter is the profoundly useful concept of a “lens” in which a When Pirsig describes research participants adapting to an inverse lens, and then finding the right-side-up lens as perplexing and disorienting as the initial perception of the inverse lens, we are truly able to viscerally “feel” what a Quality or value-based worldview might mean.
And in this first part of the chapter, Pirsig clarifies and hopefully relieves the consternation we encountered in Chapter 3 of ZaMM (the Ghost chapter) where Robert attempts of explain to John Sutherland why the “law of gravity” seems so completely primary to us, even though it isn’t. Even though this is a cultural pattern passed down over the centuries that gives us a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of an apple dropping from a tree. Are there other plausible explanations? Probably, but we can’t imagine any other because this Newtonian lens creates axioms where they don’t exist.
The MoQ, according to Pirsig, is as complete a view of the structure of reality as is available. Meaning, that any dilemma encountered by a SoM view can be easily and simply resolved. Among the old and current still conundrums: determinism or free will? Answered simply, so simply in fact you’re irritated you didn’t think of it: the contents of your boxcars (biological, conditioned, and learned) determine your lens, but where you guide the train is open to choose. Causation? How about B prefers A versus A causes B…and on down the line.
IN this chapter, he evokes James’ pragmatic truth. Like the law of gravity, it’s true until something else comes along. Therefore, both fixed and flexible truth fulfill the test:
“The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these.”
This also means that things like theoretical physics, which propose a particle based on mathematical consistency, don’t pass muster. It’s a patch, the same way zoologists had to invent a patch species in which to place the platypus. We can’t experience a muon or gluon, even if they line up so precisely and consistency with the model that Quantum analysis can boast that their experiments are the most consistent of all.
If substance is high quality static inorganic patterns (high quality meaning in this case that they stick around for a very long time) then gluons and muons are not that. They aren’t substance at all…they are intellectual patterns that line up with the math and describe something that is measured. But is that “something” substance, or is it something else? Only if you insist that substance, or particles are at the bottom of all reality, do you force them into existence with intellectual patterns?
So, neither subatomic particles nor laws of physics are primary. They are high quality intellectual patterns, tools that help us, but they are not primary, nonetheless. What is primary is that we value them. And in time, we see it happening already, these patterns will slowly (or perhaps rapidly) dissolve to be replaced with a better “truth”.
Because physics have become primarily a collection of awesome and blindingly complex mathematical equations, a layman has little chance of ever understanding physics. But is that really the case? Is it true that a non-mathematician can ever understand physics? What is physics anyway but a way of understanding what our sense perception is telling us about the nature of physical reality. Why can’t a small child understand physics? Well, under the MoQ he can. Particles do what they do because the want to!
At the bottom of it all is value.
So, what of that empiricism though that MoQ is a member? Well, experiences themselves are considered as real as objects in the MoQ. In fact, anytime value is experienced, that’s real, it’s a pattern of Value. The great example Pirsig gives is the instant perception of pain, as in sitting on a hot stove.
“The low value comes first, then the subjective thoughts that include such things as stove and heat and pain come second. The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind.”
Much of the world in any given moment is not being valuated. If there’s a hot stove, but if I’ve never seen a stove, on it, it’s a pretty neutral thing. However, once I sit on that stove, that pattern of low and painful Quality is etched on my memory. That memory is just as much of a “thing” as is a rock. And is the notion to avoid an action that will cause certain pain any less real than the weight and smoothness of a rock in your hand?
There have been some impenetrable quandaries in philosophy that the MoQ handily answers by inverting the nature of objects. Like the reality of the platypus presents itself to zoologists who try to categorize it within their system, so too do these philosophical conundrums present themselves as unsolvable. We were just talking about those disappearing particles at the sub-atomic level. …aside from the fact that it is perfectly measurable, this mystery is unfathomable.
But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles “prefer” to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences
We can measure them as waves or particles, but they just do what they do. So, what is actually under there that is doing the doing?
As we’ve just explored, those particles were not identified on sight. They were inferred, or dare I say, created by theory. While the precision of the measurements seemed so perfect as to be a reflections of the form of reality, they cannot be found by the senses. They only exist as intellectual ghosts who have fooled us into believing they are particles.
“Since the quantum bundles are not substance and since it is a usual scientific assumption that these subatomic particles compose everything there is, then it follows that there is no substance anywhere in the world nor has there ever been. The whole concept is a grand metaphysical illusion.”
Yet somehow, whatever is at the bottom of it all likes to stick together. After all, there is strength (and freedom) in numbers.
When the act of valuing, of relationship, replaces the idea of bumping particles and objects acting on each other with predictable results, reality ceases to be a certain system with leftover problems we sweep under the rug and becomes an interconnected moral system that makes absolute sense of everything we sense.