Hi DMB, > It seems to me that Pirsig's solution to this intellectual emergency would be > of interest to Sam Harris, to say the least. Would you be interested in > drafting a letter to Sam explaining how the MOQ might serve his project? > Maybe we could all do it together, as a group project. Who knows, maybe it > would actually make a positive difference. Maybe it'll actually introduce > some quality into the public debate about morality. Pun intended.
Steve: I doubt there are many here who want to hear it, but I think on the contrary Harris's book would give MOQers a more effective vocabulary for publically addressing the "intellectual emergency," and for Harris to add metaphysical arguments about how Quality creates subjects and objects would only make him a less effective spokesmen for our concerns about the role or values and morals in the world and the need for a new spiritual rationality. Consider that most intellectuals are likely to think that Sam Harris is already a nutcase just for asserting that science is not divorced from values. What would they say of him if he added to his crtiques of the fact-value dichotomy that he believes that A causes B ought to be understood to mean B values precondition A or that a human being is a collection of static patterns of value of four types with the extra-added ingredient of an ability to respond to dynamic quality? Could such notions do anything but subtract from the case Harris already is making for dissolving the wall of separation between values and rationality? I don't see how they could. It is impossible to know to what extent Pirsig has influenced culture. The positivists have been steadily losing ground, and Pirsig may have made a big contribution to its gradual demise, but twenty years after the publication of Lila it never seemed less likely than it does today that the MOQ vocabulary for talking about values will attain a static latch in intellectual culture. At this point, it is clear to me that Sam Harris is the public intellectual best placed to start and contribute to a needed conversation about values and rationality, and Pirsig's Quality won't help him do it. Best, Steve 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/md/archives.html
