Greetings,
Rick, well spotted indeed. I have been half-heartedly looking into this since my recent conversation
with Roger regarding William James. It should read the latter and is not logically correct. The more
I look back at Pirsig, the more I think he is a psychologist rather than a metaphysician. Assertions
presuppose an asserter. Hugh said a while back that, "There is no such thing as good or bad ; but
thinking makes it so," and Pirsig claims that;
“Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of
conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new
patterns evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution
creates in its wake a wash of problems. It's out of this struggle between
conflicting static patterns that the concepts of good and evil arise.”
Notice that good and evil are 'concepts.' It seems to me that Pirsig has presupposed the human mind
and is writing about how we perceive the world rather than how the world is, or might be without
human inhabitants. Actually, I don't think that Pirsig has considered this point very carefully as
he does slip between the two on a number of occasions and, as Rick shows, ends up conflating the
two.
Struan
------------------------------------------
Struan Hellier
< mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
"All our best activities involve desires which are disciplined and
purified in the process."
(Iris Murdoch)
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