Hi Ham, Thanks for the congrats and glad you found the column of value. I often think that the gap between your philosophy and Pirsig's is not as wide as might appear if only the difference between the meaning of "moral" and "value" as used in your respective explanations could be bridged. I see Essence and Quality essentially similar (if you'll pardon the pun).
Happy Easter, Platt > Hi Platt -- > > > > I wrote a comment to the NY Times about the column entitled > > "The End of Philosophy" by David Brooks that I told you about. > > Out of 446 comments received the editors chose 11 to highlight, > > one of which was mine: ... > > Congratulations on "getting published" in the Times, and thanks for > providing this reference. I'm dismissing Mr. Brooks' politics for the > moment, because this op-ed piece is lucid, relevant, and well worth > reading > on its own merits. I don't know why he titled it 'The End of Philosophy', > since his message is that philosophy has actually expanded into moral and > esthetic study. But I was particularly interested in his (or author > Gazzaniga's) take on human values as individual "preferences". > > "As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a > recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, > 'Our > brain is computing value at every fraction of a second Everything that > we > look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our > awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... > what > our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of > value in our environment.' ... > > "In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions > that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia > memorably wrote, 'The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of > morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as > a > high priest.' ... > > "The third nice thing is that it explains the haphazard way most of us > lead > our lives without destroying dignity and choice. Moral intuitions have > primacy, Haidt argues, but they are not dictators. There are times, often > the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to > override moral intuitions, and often those reasons - along with new > intuitions - come from our friends." > > In some ways this psycho-emotional rationale for value and morality lends > more support to Essentialism than to Pirsig's philosophy. In fact, I've > decided to run it on next week's Values Page. (It won't be the first time > a > source cited by Platt Holden has appeared on my website ;-). > > Thanks again for keeping us posted on reviews of philosophical interest. > > 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/
