Re: MD md death penalty

[Matt the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat]

Platt, it's not just you.

Simon:

I'm, well, completely flabergasted.  I guess that's the only word for it.  I didn't know someone could so entirely ride the fence of completely understanding something and totally not getting it, but here we are.

I guess my advice would be to throw out everything you think you know about the MOQ and Pirsig and start all over from the beginning.  Because you're right, your understanding of the MOQ doesn't help anybody.

The thing that Pirsig does that's "new" and Dynamic, if I had to name one thing, is his placement of Quality as Reality.  Quality is reality.  That's it.  Game over.  That's the coolest thing I've ever seen done in metaphysics.

What this does is make values create reality.  (Or at least objects. Lila Ch 8--beginning)  Quality and values.  We sense Quality all around us and our values interpret the way we sense Quality.  Now here's the kicker; here's the home run over the fence and apparently the paragraph you missed:
"The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral judgements are essentially assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world."  (Lila Ch. 12--end)

Pirsig is not trying to fundamentally change what morality/ethics means.  He's showing that what they fuandamentally mean (assertions of value) is interpreted differently and better than the conventional, full-blown definition of morality/ethics (socio-bio code).

I'm sorry if I'm coming across harsh or mean.  The problem is that you've missed Pirsig's whole point, even the point of ZAMM:  subjects and objects are just one way to cut up reality.  You've got to take off the sunglasses that society has given you (and that you, like all of us, admit to wearing) and start looking at the world in a different way.  Each way is arbitrary.  Yes, that is what I'm saying.  The Dynamic-static division is just as arbitrary as the subject-object.  "The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation." (Ch. 8--beginning)

The only "real" thing that we can be sure of is Quality.  We know it's there.  We can sense it.  We experience it.

In the Humility of One Who Knows (With His Tongue in His Cheek),

Matt