Platt [Ron] --
[Platt, to Ham]: > Apparently you are unfamiliar with Pirsig's rationale for > extending the meaning of morality. ... > > "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." > > He then proceeds to explain why morality better explains > the concepts of "substance" and "cause" -- foundations of > the subject/object worldview. What I see as Pirsig's "rationale" is to re-arrange the attributes of existence to invent a new perspective. Like the cartographer who, feeling a bit tipsy one day, looks at a relief map of the world and decides to draw his own boundaries, Pirsig looks at common experience and divides it up in an uncommon way, making Quality the "moral superpower" and classifying subjective and objective elements as its subordinate levels. Having redefined everything to suit his moralistic rationale, he sits back and says, "See--this is what reality really is. Isn't morality wonderful?" How stupid of us ignoramuses not to see that we were looking at morality all the time! That's poetic license for a writer, of couse. But PHILOSOPHY?? > He may have had you in mind, Ham, when he wrote those words. :-) > > So Pirsig's extension of morality beyond human behavior is no > "sleight-of-hand." Its reasoned justification is fully expounded in > Chapter 8. Unfortunately I'm only one of those "subjective patterns" that he has subordinated to Morality. I remain unimpressed with its "reasoned justification". Thanks for the primer anyway, Platt. Regards, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
