[MD] theories of truth

[david buchanan]

Amoral objectivity (value-free science) is the problem. The solution is to ditch this genetically flawed conception of rationality for an expanded rationality in which knowledge and truth IS a species of value. And yet the anti-intellectualists would like us to believe that intellectual values are inherently degenerate, that it's always a sin to trade in definitions or concepts of any kind. This misses the point of the MOQ by a distance that can only measured in light years. Or maybe it's more like shooting yourself in the eye. 

In ZAMM Pirsig wrote (all emphasis is Pirsig's in the original):

"Hold Quality undefined. That was the secret." (ZAMM, p. 218)

"Thus did he seek to turn the attack. The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape. Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it from seeing the obvious." 
"A real understanding of Quality doesn't just serve the System, or even beat it or even escape it. A real understanding of Quality CAPTURES the system, tames it, and puts it to work for on'w own personal use, while leaving one completely free to fulfill his inner destiny." (ZAMM, p.223)

"I don't mind the Quality, it's just that all the classical talk about it ISN'T Quality. Quality is just a focal point around which a lot of intellectual furniture is getting re-arranged." (ZAMM, p.223)


"I think furthermore, that all his metaphysical mountain climbing did absolutely nothing to further either our understanding of what Quality is or of what the Tao is. Not a thing.   That sounds like an overwhelming rejection of what he said and thought, but it isn't. I think it's a statement that he would have agreed with himself, since any description of Quality is a kind of definition and must therefore fall short of its mark.  ...No, he did nothing for Quality or the Tao. What benefitted was reason. He showed a way by which reason may be EXPANDED to include elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been considered irrational. I think it's the overwhelming presence of these irrational elements crying for assimilation that creates the present bad quality, the chaotic disconnected spirit of the twentieth century." (ZAMM, p. 257)

"I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all. It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice."


Similarly, in LILA Pirsig wrote: 

"The Metaphysics of Quality says that science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order than the old biological and social patterns. But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one-is another matter altogether. Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method. Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." 


Is this a case of intellect, "a lower form of evolution, ..trying to devour a higher mystic one"? Are we supposed to slam the breaks on scientific progress itself. Are we going to shout down every attempt to say anything about anything by simply saying that Quality cannot be defined? Are we supposed to believe that living and thinking like a human being is some kind crime? You think Pirsig would write two philosophy books just to say that any kind of philosophical discussion is some sort of moral violation? This whole conversation is just asinine and yet it has gone on year after year.


I'm so sick of this stubborn, stubborn stupidity. Not even when it's spoon-fed right up to your lips!