Ron and Platt -- On 12/31 Platt quoted LILA, Chptr. 24:
"A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely superior culture to one that does not, and a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not." Ron replied:
I ...have no problem with stating that Pirsig's quote ...is faulty. A culture IS the dominance of social values over biological values, and Intellectual values are defined by the culture they emerge from. Therefore judging cultures by this standard is unequivocally bias[ed] and unsound.
I think that criticism is justified. Categorizing values into biological, social and intellectual is problematic because the process of categorization is itself intellectual. Besides, there is no need to organize Value into categories. Value isn't a tri-partite system like the French Revolutionary motto "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". In fact, value is infinitely differentiated in experiential reality. There are sensory values, moral values, rational values, aesthetic values, cultural values, academic values, culinary values, musical values, etc., so that defining value as a triadic axiom is not only epistemologically unsound but philosophically deceptive. It's a metaphoric scheme invented by Pirsig to circumvent the fundamental subject/object duality.
Ron is right that a culture is achieved by adapting individual (biological?) values to conform with a collective (socially moral) system. You can't judge the morality of a culture by its "intellect" any more than you can judge the quality of a flower by its color. If intellect is to be the dominant value in existence, then what value does the biological human being have? Man isn't fabricated out of intellect, nor can he "reason" his way into existence. Clearly we need biological and chemical processes to become aware of ourselves and experience a world external to us. Rationality and value-sensibility are the attributes which make man the dominant creature in the universe, whether his activities and achievements are evaluated individually or in terms of his cultural history.
Let me take this opportunity to wish both of you happiness and good health in the new year.
Best 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/
