PERCEPTION OF VALUES:

AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT M. PIRSIG’S

METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY

WITH A COMPARISON TO THE VALUE SYSTEM OF HUNTER LEWIS

BY

MARGARET H. HETTINGER

VALUES AND ETHICS IN LEADERSHIP

SPALDING UNIVERSITY

DR. M.A.SHAUGHNESSY, Professor

3/5/99

The word “believe” has two important senses. One sense involves the Belief that comes from a creed or statement that is conscious and shared. The other sense of belief involves the result of testing internal suppositions and Beliefs with experience.

Since I have spent the last ten or fifteen years evaluating a particular formal value system with my own observation and experience, I am going to try to present a portion of the de facto creed of that Belief--quotations from the book that proposes and outlines the system.

The value system is called Metaphysics of Quality, and the book is Lila: An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. (Bantam, New York, 1991) Since the author takes an entire book, a combination novel/essay, to outline his proposal, it is probably too much to hope that the essence can be gleaned from a few statements, but it is an attempt worth making. For real understanding, the narrative contained in the novel Lila (Pirsig, 1991) and its predecessor, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig, 1976) offer insight that explanatory statements cannot give. Still, it is an attempt worth making.

The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide. Lila pg. 113

The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable....” Lila, pg. 113

The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind. Lila, pg. 114

...’a thing that has no value does not exist.’ The thing has not created the value. The value has created the thing. Lila, pg. 114

If Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn’t seek the absolute ‘Truth’. One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along.” Lila, pg. 114

Value is not a subspecies of substance. Substance is a subspecies of value. Lila, pg 116

“In the Metaphysics of Quality ‘causation’ is a metaphysical term that can be replaced by ‘value’. Lila, pg. 119

“...’substance’ is a derived concept, not anything that is directly experienced. No one has ever seen substance and no one ever will. All people ever see is data.” Lila, pg. 120

“Not subject and object but static and Dynamic is the basic division of reality. When A.N. Whitehead wrote that ‘mankind is driven forward by dim apprehensions of things too obscure for its existing language,’ he was writing about Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and always new. Lila, pg. 133

“Static Quality, the moral force of the priests, emerges in the wake of Dynamic Quality. It is old and complex. It always contains a component of memory.” Lila, pg. 133

Life can’t exist on Dynamic Quality alone. It has no staying power. To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to cling to chaos. Lila, pg. 139

All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward Dynamic Quality. Lila, pg. 160

There is not just one moral system. There are many. Lila, pg. 183

First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of biological life over inanimate nature. Second, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the social order over biological life – conventional morals – proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery, theft and the like. Third, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the intellectual order over the social order – democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Finally there’ s a fourth Dynamic morality which isn’t a code. Lila, pg. 187

“...not just life, but everything is an ethical activity. It is nothing else.” Lila, pg. 181

There are many fascinating and fruitful aspects of this description of the concept of value. One is that there are five types of struggle between different levels of values (static Quality). The definition of the area of struggle in which an entity functions may have more to say about its reality than any of its objective qualities. The five areas are

· chaotic-inorganic

· inorganic-biological

· biological-social

· social-intellectual

· Static-Dynamic.

As Pirsig says,

This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life isn't defined by society or

intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from domination by any static pattern,

but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns

themselves. (Pirsig, 1991)

For instance, it wouldn’t be far wrong to say that Old Testament values are those patterns of actions that exist in the social-biological area of struggle, while New Testament values function in the intellectual-social area.

Believe me, woman, the hour is coming

when you will worship the Father

neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You people worship what you do not understand;

we worship what we understand...

But the hour is coming, and is now here,

when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

(Jesus of Nazareth, as quoted in John 4:21-24)

For another example, “Theory X” interactions are social-biological. “Theory Y” interactions are social-intellectual. The traditional leader is probably a person who functions within the intellectual-social area, with followers who focus more on the social-biological. ‘New’ leadership, as it has developed within the last fifty years, might well be a situation in which the leader (or leaders) get their power from interacting within the Dynamic-static area, and those who follow are able to interact within the intellectual-social area. One of the observations within MoQ is that each level opposes its lower parent level, so there is no smooth transfer or gradation. This sheds light on some of the disappointments in applying new leadership styles. If some situation kicks the leaders and/or followers into a lower mode of interaction (perhaps stress, danger, or over-extension) the Dynamic leadership patterns are no longer perceived as expected and contrariness or unpredictability result.

People are complex bundles of patterns themselves contained in larger patterns of value—in intellectual patterns of value, in social patterns of value, in biological patterns of value and in inorganic patterns of value.

When someone knocks on a door, the valued interaction is an inorganic one, in which the fingers’ interaction with the wooden surface produces an expected vibration, a sound.

Those fingers themselves are usually perceived in a biological sense as patterns of living flesh and blood. The door is part of a person’s biological patterns as well, inasmuch as it provides protection from danger and the elements.

When the person inside a room hears the knocking sound, and turns to the door without any thought, a perception and interaction has occurred on the social level. The act of opening a door at a knock is a social pattern of value.

If the person realizes that she has no shoes on and stops to make a decision whether or not to put them on before opening the door, her social patterns have called on an intellectual pattern of value (some kind of comparison or projection algorithm) to do this.

When this person opens the door to greet whoever is on the other side, social patterns are available to deal with the situation. People have access to huge sets of them, complex hierarchies of behaviors including conscious decision points (access to static intellectual patterns). Decisions are always made according to values, usually social values (by default) for members of human society. However, the particular social pattern used would be quite different if the door opened to reveal a friend, an adversary, a police officer, a missionary, or a Girl Scout selling cookies.

Social patterns might suddenly appear to be of low value if the door reveals a snarling tiger or a fire. In that case, biological patterns are more valuable. The reaction results in a reversal, the instant shutting of the door. (This reversal phenomenon is an important clue to the fact that a boundary has been crossed.)

If the door’s opening reveals something totally outside the patterns of human society (such as the void of space) none of the existing patterns will suffice. In that case--a meeting with Dynamic Quality--a new action or pattern may be generated. If it survives the encounter, this new pattern will have a valued place somewhere in the patterns of the universe. There are, of course, less drastic confrontations with Dynamic Quality, but the result is the same. A new static pattern of value becomes part of reality.

So, now we’ve seen how different value systems come into play, and how a person’s interaction shifts between different value sets. This same type of interaction holds true for other organizations as well.

Pirsig’s division into four great sets of evolutionary patterns of value has a firm basis in history and in function, but there are other methods of value classification as well. Hunter Lewis classifies six sets of values. (Lewis, 1990) They are classified by the mode in which a person arrives at knowledge. This is consistent with Pirsig’s system, in which intellectual patterns are the most highly-developed of all the patterns, and all the lower-level patterns have since been affected by them, so that they can never be totally independent again.

Lewis’s category	Lewis’ explanation	Level of Interaction	Level of focus	MoQ explanation
Emotion	Feeling that something is right: Although we do not usually associate feeling with thinking and judging, we actually “think” and “judge” through our emotions all the time	Social	Bio-logical	Social-biological patterns of value. “Judging” is a social function. Unconscious action triggered directly by sense data is also social. The interest or focus is on is socialized biological patterns.
Authority	Taking someone else’s word, having faith in an external authority. For example, having faith in church or Bible	Social	Intel-lectual	This describes a mode of perception that exists solely within static social patterns of value. Its interest, or focus, is on socialized intellectual patterns.
Deductive Logic	Subjecting beliefs to the variety of consistency tests that underlie deductive reasoning	Intellectual	Social	Using and perceiving intellectual patterns of value. Note, however, that these particular intellectual patterns have become part of human social patterns as well.
Sense experience	Gaining direct knowledge through our own five senses	Intellectual	Bio-logical	This type of interaction focuses on biological patterns of value. Note, however, that the impetus for observation and gaining knowledge is intellectual. This is actually an instance of recatagorizing (re-valuing) intellectual patterns
Intuition	Unconscious thinking that is rational rather than emotional... Both the conscious mind and the unconscious-intuitive mind are highly rational and sophisticated, but the unconscious-intuitive mind is much more powerful than the conscious mind...hence most creative discoveries are intuitively derived, and only later “dressed up” by logic, observation, or some other conscious technique.	Any, but in modern culture usually non- Intellectual	All	This refers the Quality Event, the experience of direct experience with Dynamic Quality. “Conscious mind”=intellectual-social area “unconscious-intuitive” NOT intellectual-social, yet not emotional (social-biological) DQ experience creates intellectual patterns which can then be socialized.

Lewis’s category	Lewis’ explanation	Level of Interaction	Level of focus	MoQ explanation
Science	A synthetic technique that relies on · sense experience to collect the observable facts; · intuition to develop a testable hypothesis about the facts; · logic to develop the test (experiment); · and sense experience again to complete the test.	Social	All	A social pattern of value that includes nodes of interaction with other levels · Juxtaposition of intellectual and biological patterns facilitates: · Dynamic Quality experience · Creation of intellectual patterns · Socialization of those intellectual patterns by subjecting them to socially-acceptable standards of consistency

To answer the question, where do I fit in Lewis’ system, the answer has to be everywhere. It depends on the situation and the mood. In actuality, people do have preferences and capabilities, and this makes a difference. (It would be really interesting to sort out Myers-Briggs and Jung according to Pirsig). All people are capable of intuition, but not all are consciously able to facilitate the process. (One of the ways to facilitate it is science, but there are others.) Since Intuition contains all the others, I think I want to claim to be most comfortable in that particular realm. It is, however, not a place in which one can live. Intuition is the mountaintop, and most of life is the valley, in which we have to remember our mountaintop vision to make our way. Progress along the way involves interacting and reforming values within all the other levels--authority, logic, sense experience, and emotion—both our internal sets and the value sets of the world around us.

Before leaving this subject, I would like to look at Lewis’ description of Intuition. I won’t agree with his statement that “intuition is a form of abstract and speculative thought,” for it is NOT thought. But Lewis is pointing in the right direction. For the social-centered human, intuition is something higher than thought, therefore Lewis is correct in pointing to something higher than ordinary thought. He also says that Intuition is largely an unconscious reflex. This is a confusion exacerbated by our Western habit of duality. Unconscious, when seen from the four-tiered MoQ, suddenly has a definition that is usually missed. In a dual-thinking logic, “unconscious” lumps together social patterns (unthinking patterns of action) and biological patterns (reflexes and life processes) AND the Dynamic Quality experience. In the Metaphysics of Quality lower-level non-intellectual patterns can be seen as entirely different from higher-than-intellectual occurrences.

Lewis gives us eight steps to facilitate Intuitive valuing. They are:

1. Tolerance

2. Self-restraint

3. Physical exercise

4. Breathing

5. Detachment

6. Concentration

7. Meditation

8. Trance

I would like to add my own list of aids to facilitation of the (Intuitive) Dynamic Quality experience:

· Backpacking

· Art of any kind, especially music

· Participation in Mass, Liturgy

· Childbirth and child care

· Teaching

· Trips and vacations, reading, movies

· Service

References:

John 4:22-23 from New American Bible, (1970), Confraternity of Christian Doctrine

Lewis, H. (1990). A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices that Shape Our Lives. San Francisco, Harper and Row

Pirsig, R.M. (1992), Lila, An Inquiry into Morals. New York, Bantam Books

Pirsig, R.M. (1970), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, New York, Bantam Books