[MD] Heads or tails?

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:

> [Case]
> Or to those who attempt to spin the notion of moral orders to mean that
> electrons and moons are Kantian's spinning in space because it is their duty
> to do so or because they "ought" to behave this way. The Moon is indeed made
> up of static patterns of value but the values are orbital velocity, mass,
> distance from the earth...

I interpret Pirsig's inorganic value patterns as ethical, not numerical. 

"So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but everything, is an ETHICAL
activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns of reality create life the
Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've done so because it's "better" and
that this definition of "betterness"—this beginning response to Dynamic Quality—
s an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based.

"When this understanding first broke through in Phaedrus's mind, that ethics and
science had suddenly been integrated into a single system, he became so manic he
couldn't think of anything else for days. The only time he had been more manic
about an abstract idea was when he had first hit upon the idea of undefined Quality
itself." (Lila, 12--emphasis added).

I would be interested in other views on this interpretation.

Platt




 


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