(no subject)
The first horn of Phaedrus’ dilemma was, If Quality exists in the object, why can’t scientific instruments detect it?
This horn was the mean one. From the start he saw how deadly it was. If he was going to presume to be some superscientist who could see in objects Quality that no scientist could detect, he was just proving himself to be a nut or a fool or both. In today’s world, ideas that are incompatible with scientific knowledge don’t get off the ground.
He remembered Locke’s statement that no object, scientific or otherwise, is knowable except in terms of its qualities. This irrefutable truth seemed to suggest that the reason scientists cannot detect Quality in objects is because Quality is all they detect. The “object” is an intellectual construct deduced from the qualities. This answer, if valid, certainly smashed the first horn of the dilemma, and for a while excited him greatly.
But it turned out to be false. The Quality that he and the students had been seeing in the classroom was completely different from the qualities of color of heat or hardness observed in the laboratory. Those physical properties were all measurable with instruments. His Quality-“excellence,” “worth,” “goodness”-was not a physical property and was not measurable. He had been thrown off by an ambiguity in the term quality. He wondered why that ambiguity should exist, made a mental note to do some digging into the historic roots of the word quality, then put it aside. The horn of the dilemma was still there.
He turned his attention to the other horn of the dilemma, which showed more promise of refutation. He thought, So Quality is whatever you like it? It angered him. The great artists of history-Raphael, Beethoven, Michaelangelo-they were all just putting out what people liked. They had no goal other than to titillate the senses in a big way. Was that it? It was angering, and what was most angering about it was that he couldn’t see any immediate way to cut it up logically. So he studied the statement carefully, in the same reflective way he always studied things before attacking them.
Then he saw it. He brought out the knife and excised the one word that created the entire angering effect of that sentence. The word was “just.” Why should Quality be just what you like? Why should “what you like” be “just”? What did “just” mean in this case? When separated out like this for independent examination it became apparent that “just” in this case really didn’t mean a damn thing. It was a purely pejorative term, whose logical contribution to the senses was nil. Now, with that word removed, the sentence became “Quality is what you like,” and its meaning was entirely changed.” It had become an innocuous truism.
He wondered why that statement had angered him so much in the first place. It had seemed so natural. Why had it taken so long to see that what it really said was “What you like is bad, or at least inconsequential”? What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad, or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? It seemed the quintessence of the squareness he was fighting. Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but… but what? …Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others-a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.
- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance