Hi Struan and All
It seems to me that denial or acceptance of SOM is ultimately irrelevant.
Your complaint is solely with the "M" You don't deny the SO dichotomy
inherent in our minds, you simply object to this phenomena being called a
metaphysics. So in essence we're arguing over whether or not something fits
an "official definition." Philosophologists argue over "official definitions"
not true philosophers.
Also irrelevant is whether of not the MOQ is a true (in other words,
official) metaphysics. Even if Struan is right about the nonexistence of SOM
and the use of strawmen, it doesn't really damage Pirsig's thoughtful
presentation of the ideas contained in ZMM and LILA. Even if LILA is flawed,
I don't see how anyone can't admire the painstaking work Pirsig put into that
book.
The work Pirsig put into LILA might not be apparent at first, but the more
you read it the more clearly evident the craftsmanship becomes. The man cares
about his work and he isn't lazy.
It occurred to me the other day that the writing of ZMM and LILA and the
creation of the MOQ can all be traced back to the problems Pirsig had with
the scientific method way back when he was in college.
He was a gifted child and started college when he was only 15 years old. At
age 17 he was expelled for failing grades, which resulted from growing mental
distress concerning the fundamental nature of the sci-method. In a way, you
could say that the scientific method triggered Pirsig's eventual descent into
mental illness and everything that followed. The time spent delving into
philosophy, the time at the University of Chicago, the writing of ZMM and
LILA and the creation of the MOQ. It's all the result of his problems with
the scientific method. That's where it all started. All of it.
Once you recognize the sci-method as Pirsig's true target, it sheds a new
angle of light on some of Struan's comments, particularly in regard to the
"man on the street."
Struan is correct when he says it is absurd to suggest that SOM is deeply
engrained in the modern mythos. See Struan's laughter example. Modern man
still evaluates things irrationally and indulges in all sorts of irrational
fantasies. The SO dichotomy may be a fundamental part of our thinking
process, but it has little effect on what we choose to believe in (such as
God) or on our evaluation of Quality.
Struan criticizes the laziness of readers who remain "in ignorance of
empirical and philosophical fact and theory." Ironically, Pirsig criticizes
the same thing. The man on the street's laziness in regard to grasping the
sci-method and its impact on our world.
And the impact is undeniable. Has the world been changed by the sci-method?
Absolutely. It's responsible for this technology all around us. To deny the
profound effect the application of the sci-method has had on shaping each
aspect of the everyday lives of human beings is as ridiculous as saying man
thinks exclusively in SO duality. Our mythos *has* been shaped by the
sci-method unless you are Amish or a Luddite.
In our modern world, ultimately, scientific truth does have the last word. It
has replaced the church as the final authority in matters of fact. It is this
authoritative position of science, and the ramifications of this authority
that Pirsig seems concerned by.
Struan named two examples of things that don't exist according to SOM,
gravity and time, both of which the man on the street believes in without
hesitation. Struan's point is that this must prove that the man on the street
doesn't decide what is real based on subject or object, which supposedly
proves Pirsig is wrong. I think that isn't the point Pirsig is trying to
make. The point is, science proclaims belief in gravity and time to be
"acceptable." Yes, speaking in strict SO terms gravity and time are
nonexistent, but somehow people have come to believe that some nonexistent
things are more scientific than other nonexistent things. If that makes any
sense. (For example, although God, gravity, and time are all equally
nonexistent, only God is considered unscientific.)
It's our intellect, how we evaluate things collectively, that the sci-method
seems to be slowly altering. Like a chunk of ice in the collective mind of
man, preserving our life spans longer (much like refrigeration preserves
food) but slowly freezing our emotions and our faith in non-objective
reality.
No one is saying scientists don't have unscientific beliefs. Many will not
believe in God yet they will believe in love. It baffles me when people say
you should not make choices based on an irrational belief in a nonexistent
God, yet these same people make choices based on an irrational belief in
love, which by their own criterion is as equally nonexistent as God. You
don't have large groundswells of people claiming love isn't real, yet there
are large groundswell that claim God isn't.
"Well, think about all the people who are murdered in the name of God," is a
common response (and they all gotta mention the Crusades). But what about all
the people murdered in the name of LOVE? "That's different," the say and
proceed to explain away love as "a biological function involving instinct and
neurons, blah, blah, blah." Is that what we should tell our kids when we
explain to them what love is? Tell them love is just an irrational biological
function? Mother to child: "I only love you because of an irrational
biological function." That seems pretty cold to me, folks! Oh well, i dunno
and i'm gettin tired of writing. But I don't think it's fair to fault someone
for believing in God if you're not going to fault them for believing in love
as well. Both have resulted in equal amouts of killing through the centuries,
but God seems to get picked on more than love.
Look at the 4 levels...inorganic, biology, society, intellect. Intellect,
since 1911, has had the elite position. Let inject a metaphor----poor and
rich. The rich, or the elite, ultimately run the show. What makes its way
down to the lower classes is the trickle down effect of the power structure.
Let's say intellect is "the rich" and society and biology are the poor. Now
the ramifications of this analogy should materialize in your mind instantly.
It starts with real objects we can touch and hold and smell. Tools created by
science that affect us biologically (spears, the wheel, computers) then these
become a part of the structure of society and *then* to the last level, the
structure of our intellect as knowledge develops and is passed down through
the years.
Nothing so massive as to be immediately obvious, but things begin to
formulate in our minds in accordance to the data coming in from the elite
"authorities of intellect" those folks who apply the sci-method to find
things out.
Its all about faith. The harmony of a particular belief. Pirsig is concerned
that we let science tell us, in effect, what it's OK to have faith in
(gravity, time, etc). And since science has been so spectacularly successful
over the years, we don't question the heart of science, namely the
sci-method, very much. Morality has no objective reality according to
science, but thankfully many people still believe in it anyway!
Jon
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