Hi Bruce and LS:
Welcome to Squad, Bruce.
Pirsig claimed, "We’re at last dealing with morals on the basis of
reason." But, as you rightfully point out, Dynamic Quality is
unreasonable. You said:
"Given that there are an infinite number of outcomes of any situation,
how can you decide which is best? Of course, it's easy enough with
hindsight but at the time, in the event, your only recourse is to use
Dynamic Quality to decide. Not that I'm saying that's necessarily a
bad thing, but it's not a reasonable thing. So Pirsig's claim is not
justified."
I question the blanket statement that "there are an infinite number of
outcomes of any situation." At the inorganic level many outcomes are
both limited and predictable as any physicist or chemist will attest.
The biological level also offers many limited and predictable
outcomes, a fact taken advantage of by the medical profession.
When it comes to the social level--economics, history, government,
religion and the like--things get a bit more dicey. Outcomes of
"reasonable" decisions at this level are less predictable and can
easily backfire. Helping the poor can create a dependency class. Being
fair can result in mediocrity. Adhering to the sanctity of life can
encourage totalitarianism.
But it's at the intellectual level where reason reigns supreme that
things can really go haywire. Taken alone, reason can justify any
decision you make including not making a decision. In fact, as shown
in numerous split-brain experiments, we mostly use our brains to make
up reasonable stories to explain our decisions, even when such stories
are ludicrous. Ben Franklin said it best: "So convenient a thing it is
to be a rational creature, since it enables us to find or make a
reason for everything one has a mind to do."
Which is why Pirsig warned that no one can come up with a perfect
metaphysics. "You can't do it," he wrote. And we know from Godel's
Incompleteness Theorem that any attempt to build a closed and complete
system of rational truth is impossible. By using reason we have
learned that we are barred from attaining ultimate knowledge using
reason alone. It’s a dead end. If we wish to progress beyond, we must
embrace a different concept of "understanding" from that of rational
explanation.
Thus, Pirsig gives us Dynamic Quality--an irrationality that every
metaphysics must include in one form or another if it is to be deemed
"reasonable." The genius of Pirsig is that the irrational,
inexplicable reality he included in order to create a reasonable
metaphysics is not one he made up out of whole cloth such as
"noumenon" but one that has been "experienced" by you and I and
everyone, even those who accuse him of being unreasonable--an
experience that has been described a thousand ways but can be summed
up simply as "beauty." Furthermore, Pirsig identified this experience
as the force responsible for the creation and evolution of the
universe.
So I conclude that Dynamic Quality is eminently reasonable because
reason requires it (or something similarly unreasonable). As for how
to make decisions based on illogical, nonsensical, inscrutable Dynamic
Quality, Joseph Campbell gave good advice: "Follow your bliss." When
dealing with decisions at the social and intellectual levels, I find
that a most reasonable thing.
Platt
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