[MD] Decision

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mary

> You see, I _do_ think Pirsig himself was the
> originator of this idea.

Pirsig obviously did propose that there was something wrong with
rationality as it was popularly understood at the time of writing
ZAMM. He discovered that the origin of the problem was the
subordination of Quality to subjects and objects. You seem to be
reading Pirsig's talk about rationality to be commensurate with his
later talk about intellectual patterns in general. However, "rational"
is a Quality-word for complimenting   intellectual patterns that are
thought to be good. In ZAMM Pirsig suggested a root expansion of
rationality to help us better handle values. Even if you read
"rationality" in ZAMM to correspond with "intellectual patterns" in
Lila (and I think you should not), a root expansion doesn't suggest
anything like the idea that traditional rationality is its own level
of evolution. It contradicts that view in an imagine of widening the
view of what ought to be called rational. He did not say anything to
the effect that the traditional view of rationality should be regarded
as an evolutionary level and a step toward a new level that is
something other than rationality.

How could Pirsig have proposed the idea in ZAMM that the collection of
all intellectual patterns of value is equivalent to traditional
subject-object metaphysics when he had not formulated either concept
at that time? Even if reading Lila later made you think that Pirsig
equated the two, the comments from LC should now make it clear to you
that it was never Pirsig's intention to do so. It should be clear that
if you thought so, you were getting Pirsig wrong. If you still think
your reading is the best way to see things, then you need to say that
Pirsig was always wrong about the MOQ and was only "the originator" of
this SOL idea to the extent that this idea was inspired by a
misreading of Pirsig.

Best,
Steve