From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 12 2005 - 09:09:13 GMT
<This was originally sent yesterday so I'm resending it in case it got lost>
--- Reformatted after being mangled by MS Outlook ---
I agree with the recent suggestion by Rebecca Temmer that rationality is a
good definition of the intellectual level. Predictably, I disagree with
Bodvar that rationality and SOM are identical or even inextricable. I have
long argued that there exists an 'eastern rationality' which is not
dependent on the assumptions of a SOM and moreover I believe Pirsig
considers the MOQ itself to be rational, or more accurately, in his words -
an expansion of rationality itself. I offer the quotes below in support of
my assertion.
"What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the belief that the
crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to
cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the
rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're
solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square'
rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia
here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong
direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to
the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the
nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution."
[ZMM, p171]
"[Phaedrus] did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefited was reason.
He showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include elements that
have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered
irrational." [ZMM, p264]
"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously
improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal
recognition of Quality in its operation." [ZMM, p286]
Here I think the "classic pattern of rationality" is a reference to
something like a dualistic S/O rationality i.e. a rationality believed to
bring the thinking subject into accurate correspondence with the independent
objective world by establishing objective facts and the objective
relationships between them. It is my contention that Pirsig wanted the MOQ
to expand this conception of rationality by taking into account the
relationship of quality to the putatively objective facts and relationships.
"It's long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection
of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so
much of these facts after they are "observed." I think that it will be
found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific
process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it,
strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."
[ZMM, p290]
"In a sense, the MOQ is an acceptance of this fact, that quality is here,
and that if we can't explain it, you're not going to get rid of the quality.
We have to adjust our system of explanation in such a way that we can
incorporate quality into a rational system of thought." [Pirsig, AHP
Lecture, 1993]
"Quality is not going to go away and if our system of thought cannot
comprehend what quality is and lay it out in a rational, orderly form then
we must modify our whole system of thought to accommodate this existence of
quality or value in our lives. The MOQ is that attempt to completely up-end
and change the entire theory of the universe from a subject-object theory of
the universe, which has existed in the past, to a value-centered universe in
which suddenly you have a system of thought in which "quality" is a real,
usable, rational term and in which no destruction is made to subjects and
objects as they are conceived in our present metaphysics." [Pirsig, AHP
Lecture, 1993]
With respect to the "attempt" described above I think LILA is full of ways
in which a metaphysics built around a concept of indefinite 'Dynamic
Quality' can be used in a rational way. E.g.:
"Because of his different metaphysical orientation Phaedrus saw instantly
that those seemingly trivial, unimportant, "spur of the moment" decisions
that Mayr was talking about, the decisions which directed the progress of
evolution are, in fact, Dynamic Quality itself." [LILA, p165]
"In the past empiricists have tried to keep science free from values.
Values have been considered a pollution of the rational scientific process.
But the Metaphysics of Quality makes it clear that the pollution is from
threats to science by static lower levels of evolution: static biological
values such as the biological fear that threatened Jenner's smallpox
experiment; static social values such as the religious censorship that
threatened Galileo with the rack. The Metaphysics of Quality says that
science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only
rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual
patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than the old
biological and social patterns.
But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the
value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious
one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is
another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than
static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to
try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress
scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the
cutting edge of scientific progress itself." [LILA, p418]
"It seemed that when you add a concept of "Dynamic Quality" to a rational
understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of
contrarians." [LILA, p411]
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the door
to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed it
because the metaphysical structure of objectivity never told them Dynamic
Quality exists." [LILA, p253]
So, in a manner akin to the historical development of physics, I think we
can talk about a classical pattern of rationality and a value-centred
rationality with the larger intellectual structure of the latter subsuming
the former. It can be noted that, whilst the classical pattern is hitched
to a representationalist conception of knowledge, an MOQ rationality more
closely aligns to a pragmatist (and arguably coherentist) conception in
which truth is measured by value and not correspondence.
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