Greetings,
Dan, you started your last posting by stating that, "Being "an inquiry into
morals," Pirsig's second
book deals with morality as value, not morality as 'good' and 'bad'." then
end it by saying, "Rather
he proposes reality as Good, . . " The only way that makes sense is if you
are re-introducing a
schism between morality and reality, (fact and value), which is, as Horse
once pointed out,
profoundly un-MoQ and precisely the root cause of Phaedrus' journey and, it
would seem, Pirsig's
writing. But I for one would rather that, at this point, we addressed John's
thoughts directly, thus
I withdraw from this particular red herring.
NOTE:
I understand and agree with your point about shades of value rather than
discrete good and bad - in
the archives you will find thousands of words from myself on this very
subject (e.g. Evil in the
MoQ, Good is a Noun, etc.) all agreeing with that point. This is NOT the
issue.
Hi Struan
Still not sure what you mean here... perhaps I've misunderstood John's essay
completely:
STRAND 2 "Quality is morality" "They're identical" "The world is primarily a
moral order" (Lila Ch 7). The problem here is how to understand the terms
morality and value (another term Pirsig equates with Quality), especially as
they are applied to inorganic substance, or to artistic and intellectual
judgements. With reference to organisms, we could rephrase this to read
something like "Organisms experience quality as having either a positive or
negative valence, insofar as the experience alerts the organism to potential
help or harm in its environment."
'Positive or negative valence' sure sounds alot like discrete good or bad
(help or harm) thus my reasons for writing. You say this is not at issue and
you want to discuss John's words directly... hmmm... thought that's what we
were doing...
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