From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun May 09 2004 - 22:33:56 BST
DMB:
> Mark, Platt and all:
>
> DMB had said:
> It strikes me as a rather crude formulation to equate terrorists and
> criminals with the biological level and then assert that we ought to kill
> them like germs. This sentiment echoes Hitler, not Pirsig.
>
> Platt replied with a quote from Pirsig:
> "Phaedrus had had no answer at the time, but he had one now. The idea that
> biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that you can talk crime
> to death, doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot directly control
> biological patterns. Only social patterns can control biological patterns,
> and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not
> words. The instrument of conversation between society and biology has
> always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun." (Lila, 24)
>
> And Platt asked:
> Would you like to rephrase what you said about not echoing Pirsig and
> comparing him to Hitler?
>
> dmb answers:
> This is a particularly spectacular example of the selective reading fallacy
> I complained about earlier today. This is the kind of thing Mark has also
> pointed to, saying that Platt's presentations leave us "hanging", but that
> we can complete the thought by turning to the text. And I say this is a
> prime example becasue Platt has simply chopped the paragraph in half. After
> "a soldier and his gun", Pirsig writes...
> "All the laws of history, all the arguments, all the Constitutions and the
> Bills of Rights and Declarations of Independence are nothing more than
> instructions to the military and police. If the military and police don't
> follow these instructions properly they might as well have never been
> written."
That doesn't change the meaning of the first part of the paragraph one iota.
> And two or three pages prior, he writes...
>
> "...these human rights are all intellect vs society issues. According to
> the MOQ these human rights have not just a sentimental basis, but a
> rational, metaphysical basis. They are essential to the evolution of a
> higher level of life from a lower level of life. They are for real.
> But what the MOQ also makes clear is that this intellect vs society
> code of morals is not at all the same as the society vs biology codes of
> morals that go back to a prehistoric time. They are completely separate
> levels of morals. They should never be confused."
So? The levels are morally separate. How does that alter Pirsig's
statement about "biological crimes" and that crimes are "biological
patterns?" Are you claiming that whole paragraph is wrong, that humans are
incapable of crimes against society, that Pirsig really didn't mean it?
> And one page after the "conversation" quote, he writes...
>
> "A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological
> values is an absolutely superior culture to one that does not, and a
> culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social
> values is absolutely superior to one that does not."
No contradiction whatsoever. A culture that supports dominance of social
values over biological criminal values is absolutely superior to one that
does not--a good example being the U.S. superiority over Saddam Hussein's
Iraq.
> dmb concludes:
> So the answer is "no". I do not care to re-phrase. Instead, I'd ask Platt
> if he would like to find an interpretation that does NOT make Pirsig into a
> self-contradictory fool who is obsessed with killing criminals and sinners.
Pirsig obsessed? My how you love to hyperbolize. Self-contradiction?
You've again failed to show any. Selective reading fallacy? Yes, it is
indeed a fallacy to select irrelevant passages in an attempt to change
meanings of words that are crystal clear, such as "biological crimes" and
"biological patterns" needing to be controlled by police and soldiers with
"guns."
Platt
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