Mark said:
It sounds to me like you are putting Quality in some kind of Truth category.
How do you get around that with your interpretation of Quality? These
distinctions are man-made, where does the truth come from?
dmb says:
No, I'm just saying that the difference between the biological and the social a
widely known distinction. This distinction is intellectual and fairly obvious
and I really don't see how anyone can get through college without bumping into
it repeatedly. None of this has anything to do with subordinating Quality to
truth. Truth is a kind of static quality, namely intellectual static quality.
And this particular truth is just about the distinctions between our cultural
values and our animal instincts. Marriage confines the acceptable limits of the
expression of our sex drive and the prohibitions against murder put restriction
on the expression of the instinct to violence and aggression. As far as I know,
no serious person would dispute this. That basic idea explains quite a lot.
It's one of the most useful generalizations ever invented.
Oh yea, I'm talking to a guy who thinks Stephan Hawking is a loser and who
thinks evolution is a stale idea. It seems you have a fondness for rejecting
some of the best ideas in circulation. For a minute, I forgot who I was dealing
with.
Anyway, for those who are interested in truth, you might want to know that
Pirsig agrees with the pragmatic theory of truth, particularly James's version
of that truth theory.
"James said, 'Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a
category distinct from good, and coordinate with it.' He said, 'The true is the
name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.' TRUTH IS A
SPECIES OF GOOD. That was right on. That was EXACTLY what is meant by the
Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger
entity called Quality." (Lila, pp. 363-4. Emphasis is Pirsig's)
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