[MD] Static latching & faith

[Ham Priday]

Ant and Scott --

> Ant quotes Pirsig:
> "Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
> succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the
> Buddhist Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God
> and Allah and you-name-it; all of them fail.  For Quality, no faith is
> required because there is no way you can disbelieve that there is
> such a thing as Quality. You cannot conceive of or live in a world in
> which nothing is better than anything else." (Pirsig's Copleston
> Annotations, 2000, p.216)

That faith is not required for an understanding of Quality is, in my
opinion, an arguable statement proffered by the author in lieu of a
metaphysical exposition to support his theory.  To claim that "Quality
succeeds" where religion and other philosophies fail is pure hyperbole.
Hegel remains one of the most respected thinkers in philosophical history.
And if religion is a failure, why has its ranks increased in our nihilistic
age to the extent that it has become a political football?  Indeed, how is
it that the faith demonstrated by a handful of religious fanatics managed to
involve the Western World in a war against Islamic facisim?

It is patently clear from the contributors to this forum that there is not
one but many "understandings of Quality", some of which contradict those of
Mr. Prisig himself.  Begging the question only makes the Quality of belief
seem somewhat strained.

Scott makes a valid point:
> On the contrary, it is very easy to conceive of a world
> without Quality, namely the scientific materialist's
> assumption of what the universe was like before there
> was life. True, one cannot conceive of human existence
> without Quality, but the MOQ claims that there is Quality
> in the inorganic as well as in the human. That is a
> non-empirical assumption. One cannot conceive of
> human existence without sensory perception either,
> but that does not imply that there is sensory perception
> in the inorganic.

Ant tries again:
> "I think it is extremely important to emphasize that
> the MOQ is pure empiricism.   There is nothing
> supernatural in it."  (Pirsig, 2000e in "A Critical
> Analysis of the MOQ" by Anthony McWatt, p.50)

If the MOQ is pure empiricism, Quality would be a fact rather than a belief.
Whenever "belief" is used to characterize a concept or theory, faith is
inferred.  While Pirsig is pleased to assert that "there is nothing
supernatural in it", not a few of his readers consider this a deficiency.  I
would ask why the author didn't see a need to discredit supernaturalism
philosophically or logically, rather than simply exclude the MOQ from it.

--Ham