Marsha said:
...You've got here a far more complicated theory. Static patterns of value
were not even considered in ZMM. I do not think your examples address the
MoQ's intellectual static patterns of value.
dmb says:
I see no reason why this idea can't be extended into the second book. In fact,
Pirsig says exactly the same thing except the motorcycle metaphor is gone.
"Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance of
intellect over society. It says that intellect is a higher level of evolution
than society; therefore, it is a more moral level than society. ...But having
said this, the MOQ goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that
has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that
subject-object science has no provision for morals. ...Now that intellect was
in command of society for the first time in history, was THIS the intellectual
pattern it was going to run society with?"
dmb continues:
In the first two sentences he's distinguishing social and intellectual values
and he's putting intellect above the social in his evolutionary hierarchy. And
we know from the larger text that the intellectual level is involved in two
moral codes, one being its relation to the static level below it and the other
being its relation to DQ.
But then he goes on to say that science is the "intellectual PATTERN that has
been appointed" and he asks if "this is the PATTERN it was going to run society
with"? He's saying scientific objectivity is a pattern, a flaw in the intellect.
Taken together, he's saying what he says elsewhere. He says, "a culture that
supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely
superior to one that does not." (Lila, p.311) But he is also saying it's
flawed. And in both books, it's the same flaw.
In ZAMM he says, "in scientific parlance the words for this absence of
subject-object duality are scarce because scientific minds have shut themselves
off from consciousness of this kind of understanding in the assumption of the
formal dualistic scientific outlook."
In Lila he says, "the MOQ goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern
that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it."
In both cases the flaw is this dualistic scientific outlook and this PATTERN is
distinguished from the intellect itself. And of course a great deal of the text
is in fact Pirsig using his analytic knife to dissect this pattern, to make a
case against this pattern.
"The MOQ 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. Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through
imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard
fields such as art, morality, religion and metaphysics as unverifiable. The MOQ
varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even
religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in the past they have been
excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons."
And then the status of subjects and objects are addressed more specifically
when he explains explains radical empiricism. We find Pirsig quoting James at
the end of chapter 29. There he says that subjects and objects are not
metaphysical realities. They are secondary concepts "derived from something
more fundamental which he [James] described as 'the immediate flux of life
which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories.' "
The dualistic scientific outlook depends on believing that we are minds
investigating an objective reality. But James and Pirsig turn that on its head.
They say objective reality is a concept, an idea that comes from experience.
They're demoting the ontological status of subject and objects. They de-reify
subjects and objects. They're showing us how this is just an intellectual
pattern, one that can be replaced, rather than the metaphysical starting points
of reality. They're saying we are not stuck with that damaged screw. They're
showing an intellectual way out. How else could an intellectual flaw be
repaired except with great intellectual skill? And what could you replace it
with if not better intellectual patterns? If the flawed pattern is equated with
the whole or the general skill, that would mean we'd be stuck forever. But
Pirsig uses that knife to carve the MOQ.
That's the same solution he was offering in ZAMM, except there are more nuts
and bolts, a fully developed conceptual structure that only clarifies and
articulates the solution already offered in ZAMM. The moral codes, particularly
the code of art, accomplishes his original purpose of making intellect
subservient to Quality rather than the reverse. Pirsig is going after this flaw
to improve science and the intellect, not to condemn them. Notice how both
books are parallel on this point too even though one has the moral hierarchy
and the other doesn't.
"The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of
biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally
correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher
evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns. But the
Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that
chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant
experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter altogether.
Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is
as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it
is for church authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value is an
integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress
itself." (LILA, p. 365-6)
(Emphasis is Pirsig's in the original)
"But we know from Phaedrus' metaphysics that harmony Poincare talked about is
NOT SUBJECTIVE. It is the SOURCE of subjects and objects and exists in an
anterior relationship to them. It is NOT capricious, it is the force that
OPPOSES capriciousness; the ordering principle of all scientific and
mathematical thought which DESTROYS capriciousness, and without which no
scientific thought can proceed. What brought tears of recognition to my eyes
was the discovery that these unfinished edges match perfectly in a kind of
harmony that both Phaedrus and Poincare talked about, to produce a complete
structure of thought capable of uniting the separate languages of Science and
Art into one." (ZAMM, p. 269-70)
------------------------------------------------------------ "I think that when
this concept of peace of mind is introduced and made central to the act of
technical work, a fusion of classic and romantic quality can take place at a
basic level within a practical working context. I've said you can actually
*see* this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and
you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to
misunderstand the nature of art. ... The mechanic I'm talking about doesn't
make this separation. One says of him that he is "interested" in what he's
doing, that he's "involved" in his work. What produces this involvement is, at
the cutting edge of consciousness, an absence of any sense of separateness of
subject and object. "Being with it," "being a natural," "taking hold" - there
are a lot of idiomatic expressions for what I mean by this absence of
subject-object duality, because what I mean is so well understood as f
olklore, common sense, the everyday understanding of the shop. But in
scientific parlance the words for this absence of subject-object duality are
scarce because scientific minds have shut themselves off from consciousness of
this kind of understanding in the assumption of the formal dualistic scientific
outlook."
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