Hi Platt,
OK, I know Pirsig says "Quality is morality". But what does this mean?
Neither word is being used in its usual manner, so how could I ever disprove
such a statement. "God is good" is an equivalent statement from the
religious domain. It may be true, but how do you ever convince someone whose
son has just been murdered of this truth. It ultimately is a matter of
faith. At least there is a reasonable community of understanding relating to
the meaning of the words 'God' and 'good', which I find lacking in the case
of Pirsig's terms. If quality = value = moral judgments = fundamental ground
stuff of the world = morality = undefined fitness = ?, then how would you
disprove that quality = Santa Claus? It's feel-good stuff, but shallow.
You go on to say "Positive and negative quality, good and bad, depend on
conflicts between levels". I just can't see it. How does the person who sits
on a hot stove, who "is in an undeniably low-quality situation", in which
"his predicament is negative", have his low quality attributed to conflicts
between levels? Pirsig says "this low quality ... is an experience". (Lila
Ch 5)
There is at least a superficial argument to be made that conflicts between
levels are an element in morality, but I argue that this only makes sense if
the levels are discrete, as Pirsig states. But the total inability of
members of this forum to agree as to what level 'terrorism', for example,
belongs to, seems to me evidence enough that his claim does not hold up.
Indeed, almost anything interesting seems to spill across levels. Try
'democracy', or 'beauty', or 'courage'.
Finally, I do not understand how you can quote "Quality is morality. Make no
mistake about it. They're identical." and go on to say "The fact that you
can't define Quality as morality is no reason to throw it out." Tell me just
what I would have to say to define Quality as morality if Pirsig's own words
(above) don't do it?
John B
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:42 BST