From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Mon Aug 23 2004 - 20:46:42 BST
Ham Priday to Paul Turner
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004
Subject: RE: MD The individual in the MOQ
Paul, as you appear to be the Keeper of the Faith around here, I'm assuming
that your question (which I'll get to in a moment) is not simply a
rhetorical one.
> Ham said:
> Paul's statement clearly places mind outside the realm of matter
> (physical reality), giving it a valuistic basis. Correct me if I'm
> wrong, Paul, but are you not saying that this "grounding in value" is
> common to both "mind" and "physical reality"?
>
> Paul:
> Yes.
> Ham said:
> It's only conjecture on my part, of course, but I think Pirsig "wants"
> to posit an "esthetic" reality but is afraid to do so ...
> He has stopped short of providing us with the logical
> conclusion to his theory. His Quality -- even as a "dynamic system"--
> doesn't measure up to the Absolute Source we're looking for. And you
> folks are all left hanging.
> Paul:
> Put the gloves down and pick up your reading glasses:
> "He was no longer talking about a metaphysical trinity but an absolute
> monism. Quality was the source and substance of everything." [ZMM, Ch20]
> Are you suggesting that Pirsig needs to postulate another source of the
> source of everything?
Yes.
If Pirsig is saying that Quality is the source of everything, and everything
is Quality, then he is positing a tautology; i.e., Quality is the source of
itself. Not only is this logically invalid, but the word "quality" is
commonly understood to mean an attribute or "peculiar nature of something",
hence is a most "peculiar" term for an absolute monism. Are we to accept
the idea that man (whose essence is Quality) is judging and acting upon a
reality that is his own essence? If so, we are discussing a philosophy that
is based on the purest form of solipsism. And I don't think this is what
the author had in mind. Reality is much too complex and purposeful in
design not to have an architect.
So, at your suggestion, I picked up my glasses and read what Pirsig had to
say about Value as a creative source:
> "Matter is not just a name for certain inorganic value patterns.
Biological patterns, social patterns, and intellectual
> patterns are support by this pattern of matter but are independent of it.
They have rules and laws of their own that are > not derivable from the
rules or laws of substance. ... What, after all, is the likelihood that an
atom possesses within its
> own structure enough information to build the city of New York?
Biological and social and intellectual patterns are
> not the possession of substance. The laws that create and destroy these
patterns are not the laws of electrons and
> protons and other elementary particles. The forces that create and
destroy these patterns are the forces of value."
> LILA 12.
The author then goes on in the next chapter to anthropomorphise his Value as
a devouring "Giant":
> "From a Metaphysics of Quality's point of view this devouring of human
bodies is a moral activity because it's more
> moral for a social pattern to devour a biological pattern than for a
biological pattern to devour a social pattern.
> A social pattern is a higher form of evolution. This city, in its endless
devouring of human bodies, was creating
> something better than any biological organism could by itself achieve."
Something better?
This could have come right out of Nietzsche's "Man and Superman"! Of course
the atom did not build New York -- man did. But Pirsig would have us
believe that the edifices of man are the work of an insentient power. This
Giant, this moral force, this Value that Pirsig says contains man and has
named as the architect of reality is beyond the reach of man, because the
author has "partitioned" him off through a self-serving heirarchy of
levels. If this accurately describes the "cosmic plan" of Pirsig's MOQ, it
is a depressing and conflicting teleology indeed, and one that might well
make us wish we were back in the dual world of subject-object empiricism.
A "benevolent god" may be an old-fashioned nostrum and no longer worthy of
consideration in our intellectually enlightened age. It at least had
meaning. Pardon me if it seems idealistic, but I see Value as relating to
something more esthetic and cosmically meaningful for mankind than this
mechanistic evolutionary scheme. (And, if the truth be told, I think you
all do, too.)
Essentially yours,
Ham
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