From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 11 2002 - 16:35:02 GMT
Hey Platt:
>I think Pirsig offers us a way to rationally (not objectively) determine
>right and wrong and fail to see how his analysis can lead to more
>demagoguery than any other moral stance one takes--rational,
>mythological, communal or whatever. Perhaps you'll explain?
>Thanks.
I think you're right to make a distinction between "rational" and
"objective" (though, I won't ask what the difference is). Most of the
creeps-vibe hinged on an "objective" interpretation, which I already said
was poor. The reason I think it lends itself (mind you, I didn't say
"lead," as in a slippery slope) to demagoguery so well is its
recapitulation of what A.O. Lovejoy called "The Great Chain of Being." The
Great Chain of Being is an old, old idea, and to both have that plus an
objective interpretation would lend credence for all those who think,
"Well, its objective! It can't be wrong!" The gist is that I don't think
it would have much of an effect on intelligent, educated people, who see
through such simplistic terms like that, but on the yokels who see
objective and think that that must lend it even more credence than it
really has.
The difference between this and other moral stances is that it combines
several themes of the others together thus lending support to it. It would
(theoretically) combine together irrational people who think that humans
rule the roost and rational people who simply want to be able to tell right
from wrong without any doubt.
Matt
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