[MD] Catching up to Pirsig

[Platt Holden]

All:

David Brooks has a column in today's New York Times entitled "The End of 
Philosophy," parts of which might have been written by someone very
familiar with the MOQ. For example:

"Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers 
embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more 
like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating 
what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are 
linked and basically simultaneous.

"As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a 
recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, 
"Our brain is computing value at every fraction of a second. Everything 
that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into 
our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... 
what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is 
of value in our environment."

The rest of the column continues in the same vein with typically liberal 
emphasis on the social values of co-operation, empathy and altruism. 
(Brooks who advertises himself as a conservative is really a closet 
liberal.) 

I think you may enjoy reading how close Brooks comes to acknowledging what 
we have known for years. His basic mistake is in the title, "The End of 
Philosophy." If someone would introduce him to ZMM and Lila he might well 
change the title to, "From a New Metaphysics a New Reality." 

You can get the column at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=1

Platt