[MD] Freedom within structure.

[david buchanan]

Ron said:
The question of the self, freewill, morality, are those terms used in an MoQ, should they be used, are best understood when we understand the aim of the expansion of reason. "Greater explanitory power" means just that. Greater explanitory power, not rejection of old concepts, the expansion of their meaning. Therefore we should revel in the expansion of old ideas we should get excited over discussing how they fit into a larger understanding.

dmb says:
Good point. The MOQ vastly expands upon the notion of morality, for example. Lila's subtitle is "An Inquiry into Morals" and, as we all (except Steve, perhaps) know, Pirsig's conception of morality is much, much broader than usual. What usually passes for morality is just the what the MOQ calls social level morality or church morality, which opposes vice and otherwise puts restraints on biological urges and instincts.
Freedom is similarly expanded so that it goes all the way down, as opposed to being limited to "rational" agents. Pirsig, James and Dewey are all on the same page in this regard. As they see it, the disinterested observer is less likely to see the truth of the matter, not more likely. As they see it, we can't think very well unless we also include the aesthetic and affective dimensions, not to mention the concrete particulars of life as it's lived. Rationality is going to be enriched and expanded by adding these very real factors. 

"In her pioneering book "Love's Knowledge", Martha Nussbaum reveals the dominant modes of Western philosophy to be significantly at odds with Dewey and Pirsig's express commitment to everyday experience. Her central claim is that the expositional style typical of academic philosophy, and of twentieth century Anglo-American analytic philosophy in particular, routinely lends an abstract, formalistic character to its content - a character that tends to diminish contextualized matters and belies this particularity. ...In reading much Anglo-American philosophy, for instance, we are often confronted with an array of prescribed methodologies - syllogistic procedures, hypothetical scenarios, puzzles, and dilemmas - that almost invariably (and hence suspiciously) manage to achieve the writer's aims neatly and efficiently. Yet they do so at the expense of the concrete particulars of lived experience." (David Granger, page 10)


Take the beer can for example. If you're stuck on the idea that it can only ever be a thing for holding beer, you'll never see what a beautiful shim it can be. And yet, if you don't understand what shims do, you're going to stuck with loose handlebars, which is the kind of mechanical problem that might kill you. You send away to Krupps, spend way too much money and wait for a few weeks or you can get out your tin snips and take any old can out of the recycling bin. Bam, you're in business. It's about seeing things for what they are. It's about really perceiving the situation for what it is, rather than snapping everything into neat intellectual categories. We see a very similar lesson in his advice to the dull writer who was told to begin her essay with a single brick. It forced her to see for herself with fresh eyes, rather than trying to imitate things she had heard before (which is only okay if you're a parrot).