To: Rick, John and Platt
JOHN WROTE:
other times talks about positive and negative quality, eg the hot stove.
I am sorry that he reified the term morals to mean quality, which he says
can't be defined. I would be much happier if he had kept the normal
usage for morals, meaning what's good or bad for humans living in society.
Quality undefined leaves all this up in the air!
PLATT RESPONDED:
If Pirsig had taken your advice and removed morality from the MOQ he
wouldn't have an MOQ at all. Nothing so marks the newness and
explanatory power of the MOQ than these words from LILA, Chap.7:
RICK COUNTERED:
Hmm... I'm not so sure about this Platt. Pirsig's claim for the MoQ
(or one of them anyway) is that it is primarily a METAPHYSICS. That is, a
response to the philosophical question of "What exists?"
ROG NOW ADDS:
Without trying to take sides, let me first state that static quality CAN be
defined within the MOQ and used to help us determine what is good and bad for
humans in society.
Second, though I have long argued that Pirsig creates confusion by
overextending a term for social quality (morality) to non social spheres, I
would agree with Platt that a major benefit of the MOQ is that it is a
metaphysics that can logically derive a 'ought' from an 'is'. What exists is
quality/value, and therefore values of all types -- including morals -- are
legitimate, rational, logically consistent fields of inquiry. Good is not a
noun in most Western metaphysics, but it is in the MOQ.
Rog
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