[MD] theories of truth

[david buchanan]

Ron said to Marsha:

...Pragmatic truth is what is intellectually "best". THIS is the highest moral code. It is allways subordinate to the good.  Being subordinate it is not degenerate nor immoral therefore neither is Pragmatic truth.



dmb says:
Exactly. Thank you.

Pirsig formulates the pragmatic theory of truth so that it is subordinate to Quality. This formulation does not violate the MOQ's code of art, the highest moral code (unless you're not doing it rightly). 

"Truth is a static intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality." (Emphasis is Pirsig's) On the same page he explains how the MOQ makes "it clear that the good to which truth is subordinate is intellectual and Dynamic Quality". 


In the AHP transcript Pirsig is asked, so what's next? What do we do with the levels and codes? His answer leans quite heavily on intellectual quality. Here I think we can see that anti-intellectualism is quite antithetical to Pirsig project and his wishes concerning the fate of that project.

quote------------
I think intellect is a guide for society and if you have a good set of intellectual principles, a good metaphysics, then you are going to guide society better. I am hoping that this MOQ will be [..] integrated into society. I am here today to help integrate this MOQ into society. I see it going into the Law. There's a huge problem with morals - all the time - and if they can use the MOQ to improve decisions made on the bench… Boy! That's a real gain for all of us you see, for society.

So you say, okay, once you understand these relationships, what next? With "next" comes the action and the action in this case will be social action. And I don't mean rush out and grab a banner or anything. I just mean there should be a natural filtration into, first of all the intellectual system and then from the intellectual system… (aside: I kept telling my publishers: "Look, don't let this book go. This is a kind of a trickle down book. It's going to start with the intellectuals at a very high level and they are going to tell people at a little lower level and they are going to tell people at a little lower level. So I got panned all over England partly because the book sounded so anti-Victorian… it was their grandmother you know, their queen. They didn't like that but one place really praised it. They said: "This author is a great thinker" and that was Oxford [University]. You see it's going to trickle down from Oxford through the rest of English society. Then I hope it is going to go into… common life by the mechanisms which we now have, by which things go into common life.

I was shut out at the University of Chicago. My normal dharma, my normal career was to go and get a PhD, present this thesis and move on into the intellectual world and teach at a University. They shut me out. So I said, okay, I'll go around you… I'll go around you. I'll appeal to the public…

I'll tell you another story. Now this was after I went to the hospital there - at the University of Chicago - the psychiatrist interviewed me and… I told him the story of this conflict which occurred there. So he went over to see the Chairman of the Committee for Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods. He came back and said: "I have never seen such a bastard in my life'. He says, 'the guy screamed at me, he shouted at me."

This psychiatrist went to the President of the University of Chicago, and he got that man reversed and I was re-allowed into the University of Chicago as a result of his efforts. I have never forgotten that. There was a moral action on the part of this man. He didn't just study me and say "I see what his problem is". He took it upon himself to change that person's mind. The Chairman of the Committee for Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods died some time ago. He never would communicate with anybody who wrote to him about my book. He was a very famous philosopher, a very famous figure but a totally static person of the most outrageous Right. He was Richard McKeon, I don't know if you ever heard of him. He was the Aristotle man at the University of Chicago. He is the guy who organised the Great Books. And for me to walk into his class and tell him: "Let's get rid of Aristotle" was just outrageous and of course you know who they got rid of…
end quote-----------


Trickle down from the intellectuals!? Oxford thinkers think his thinking is great!? As you can clearly see, Pirsig is a totally degenerate bastard. How can the man sleep at night? How can he live with the crimes he's committed? ;-)