Greetings: (to borrow Struan's Olympian salutation)
Struan claims Pirsig is unoriginal. His claim is based on the
assumption that morality cannot be disassociated from God, that
somehow good and God always go together like Simon and Garfunkle.
Whether he drags out unnamed German Idealists or graybeards like
Fichte or de Chardin to show that Pirsig has plenty of company, Struan
always sees morality accompanied by God's presence. Apparently for
Struan there would be no such thing as morality without God, the Bible,
the Ten Commandments and (probably) the Church of England.
Take "God" out of Struan's argument that Pirsig is a copy cat and the
argument collapses.
What Struan fails to recognize, and what Pirsig unveiled for the world to
see, is that all value judgements -- God or no God -- are MORAL
judgments. Whenever you make a decision of any kind you engage in
moral activity. God may or may not be relevant, depending entirely on
individual predilection.
"They cannot ...go five minutes of their lives without making a quality
decision: that is, a decision that something is better than something
else." (Pirsig to McWatt, Aug. '97)
In other words, Pirsig freed morality from the exclusive province of
personal conduct in a social/cultural context and applied the simple
concept that "some things are better than others" to the whole
kitzamabule--from quantum soup to slime mold to alligators to
elephants up to and including academic philosophers.
In going against all previous assumptions about what morality was
confined to, he built a truly unique metaphysics whose taxonomy
explains some "platypi" that up to now philosophers have failed to
convincingly solve. Whether the taxonomy interests Struan is of no
interest.
A good example of the whole point of the MOQ completely missed by
Struan is his following remark:
"Now Platt returns to the circular. 'If you want to refute the MOQ, you
have to make a moral judgment thus proving the MOQ.' This is not an
interesting argument to an academic philosopher as it incorporates
one of the premises in the conclusion. You have already to have
accepted the MOQ (or something like it) to accept that refuting it is a
moral judgment, but this is the very issue in question."
Obviously Struan makes a judgement by saying my argument won't fly
because it is "circular." He is making a judgment that his opinion of
what makes a good argument is better than mine. Try as he might,
Struan cannot deny his own stated values. And, whether he admits it or
not, this is the "very issue in question" which is really not a
questionable issue at all since no one can escape from making
judgments such as, "this is the very issue in question."
Platt
P.S. Struan's snide remark about United States leaders being
"incapable of ruling society" shows an astounding lack of
understanding. The fact that our Constitution prevents the great bulk of
our society from being ruled by anybody accounts for the unparalleled
success of the country. We have seen the horrors inflicted on society
by those who believed they could rule "for the benefit of humanity" and
were granted the power to do so by a gullible public.
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