[MD] Idealistic static value patterns

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Tuukka,

You've offered a wonderful model of systematizing Pirsig's philosophy.  
Bravo!

To the operative claim in your philosophical criticism of Pirsig's MoQ, 
however, I think you make a mistake.  You say, "Their [the static 
patterns system laid out by Pirsig] primary disadvantage is, that they 
are a variant of emergent physicalism, because the bottom pattern, 
from which other patterns emerge, is inorganic. This isn't a 
disadvantage in itself. It's a disadvantage because Pirsig didn't 
develop a parallel system of patterns that would be idealistic."  You 
make "disadvantage" more specific by saying it is the "assumption 
that existence is fundamentally inorganic."

I think it is a mistake to understand Pirsig as suggesting "physical 
existence as a fundamental ontological category."  Pirsig's first 
metaphysical move is to make Quality the fundament of reality.  On 
my reading, that exactly makes normativity the fundamental 
constitutive category that undergirds all further modes of 
understanding existence.  To my mind, Pirsig exactly agrees with 
you as you move to extrapolate a more fine-grained analysis of 
levels.  (Dan Glover, in a conversation we've been carrying on for 
near two months, has in fact called this Pirsig's idealism.  I tend to 
agree with this sense of idealism as normativity.)

Matt