From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Thu Sep 09 2004 - 01:35:46 BST
Subject: Re: MD The free market of thought
Dear Platt,
Sorry you weren’t too impressed with the Marxist rhetoric so, on this occasion, I will attempt to deal with this important issue concerning the “free market of thought” with the seriousness it merits.
Ant McWatt stated on September 7th:
Remember a free market means a dynamic system whether economic or educational and the latter (in the MOQ) is primary.
Platt Holden commented on this September 7th:
And educational dynamic system primary in the MOQ? I don't think so. Pirsig blasted intellectuals in Lila, calling their obeisance to scientific objectivity “hogwash” (Lila, 22). Further negative assessments of intellectuals can be found in Chapters 22 and 24.
Ant McWatt states September 8th:
These references to intellectuals (i.e. remember these are social patterns) and the intellectual level struck me as rather vague and unhelpful (definite quotes, please Platt!) so I re-read Chapters 22 and 24. This clearly indicates that the above comment of Platt’s is misleading (it is indeed first class “hogwash” itself) because he has erroneously conflated SOM intellectual patterns (i.e. a concern with “objectivity” as providing the absolute truth) with the MOQ’s intellectual level as a whole (in which the
SOM intellectual pattern is but one of a myriad of differing intellectual patterns).
Firstly, in Chapter 22, Pirsig makes it clear that the intellectual level is given a higher priority in the MOQ than the social level:
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It should be stated at this point that the Metaphysics of Quality
supports this dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a
higher level of evolution than society; therefore, it is a more moral level
than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for
a society to destroy an idea.
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McWatt notes: Pirsig then qualifies the above statement in that the SOM-based intellect that has been in control (during the 20th century) has a defect; namely it essentially perceives morals as unreal:
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But having said this, the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals. Subject-object science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single moral. There aren't any there. They
are all in your head. They exist only in your imagination.
>From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world is a completely
purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything. Nothing is
right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like machinery.
There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally wrong with
lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide. There is
nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just functions.
Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time in history,
was this the intellectual pattern it was going to run society with?
As far as Phædrus knew, that question has never been successfully answered.
What has occurred instead has been a general abandonment of all social
moral codes, with “a repressive society” used as a scapegoat to explain any
and every kind of crime.
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McWatt notes: Subsequently, in Chapter 24, Pirsig makes it clear that it is only social patterns which seek to dominant intellectual patterns which are immoral; not social patterns as a whole, that it is indeed moral for intellect to assist society in its control of biological patterns:
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The paralysis of America is a paralysis of moral patterns.
Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared
intellectually illegal by the subject-object metaphysics that dominates
present social thought. These subject-object patterns were never designed
for the job of governing society. They're not doing it. When they're put
in the position of controlling society, of setting moral standards and
declaring values, and when they then declare that there are no values and
no morals, the result isn't progress. The result is social catastrophe.
It's this intellectual pattern of amoral “objectivity” that is to blame for
the social deterioration of America, because it has undermined the static
social values necessary to prevent deterioration. In its condemnation of
social repression as the enemy of liberty, it has never come forth with a
single moral principle that distinguishes a Galileo fighting social
repression from a common criminal fighting social repression. It has, as a
result, been the champion of both. That's the root of the problem.
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McWatt notes: Hence, in the subsequent paragraphs, the criticism by Pirsig of the SOM intellectual sentiment that the social level needs to be undermined. However, it is important to note that this is not a criticism by Pirsig of the MOQ intellectual level per se. As such, it is important to note that these two types of intellectual patterns are being mischievously conflated by Platt in his arguments:
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Phædrus remembered parties in the fifties and sixties full of liberal
intellectuals like himself who actually admired the criminal types that
sometimes showed up. “Here we are,” they seemed to believe, “drug pushers,
flower children, anarchists, civil rights workers, college professors-we're
all just comrades-in-arms against the cruel and corrupt social system that
is really the enemy of us all.”
No one liked cops at those parties. Anything that restricted the police
was good. Why? Well, because police are never intellectual about
anything. They're just stooges for the social system. They revere the
social system and hate intellectuals. It was a sort of caste thing. The
police were low-caste. Intellectuals were above all that
crime-and-violence sort of thing that the police were constantly engaged
in. Police were usually not very well educated either. The best thing you
could do was take away their guns. That way they'd be like the police in
England, where things were better. It was the police repression that
created the crime.
What passed for morality within this crowd was a kind of vague, amorphous
soup of sentiments known as “human rights.” You were also supposed to be
“reasonable.” What these terms really meant was never spelled out in any
way that Phædrus had ever heard. You were just supposed to cheer for them.
He knew now that the reason nobody ever spelled them out was nobody ever
could. In a subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no
meaning. There is no such thing as “human rights.” There is no such thing
as moral reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else.
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McWatt notes: Continuing, in Chapter 24, Pirsig then concludes that (the intellectually-based) MOQ provides a solution to the amorality caused by SOM intellect’s failure to properly perceive the distinctions between intellectual, social and biological patterns:
------------------------------------
The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and
society, subject and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a
larger system of understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological
values; subjects are social and intellectual values. They are not two
mysterious universes that go floating around in some subject-object dream
that allows them no real contact with one another. They have a
matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That evolutionary relationship
is also a moral one.
Within this evolutionary relationship it is possible to see that intellect
has functions that predate science and philosophy. The intellect's
evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an ultimate meaning of the
universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical purpose has
been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies. It
can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this
purpose.
The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their
situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies
Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons.
Therefore, to the question, “What is the purpose of all this intellectual
knowledge?” the Metaphysics of Quality answers, “The fundamental purpose
of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve society.”…
The Metaphysics of Quality suggests that the social chaos of the twentieth
century can be relieved by going back to this point of departure and
re-evaluating the path taken from it. It says it is immoral for intellect
to be dominated by society for the same reasons it is immoral for children
to be dominated by their parents. But that doesn't mean that children
should assassinate their parents, and it doesn't mean intellectuals should
assassinate society. Intellect can support static patterns of society
without fear of domination by carefully distinguishing those moral issues
that are social-biological from those that are intellectual-social and
making sure there is no encroachment either way.
---------------------------------------
McWatt notes: And this is why completely unfettered commercial free markets in all aspects of life can lead to immorality – without any intellectual control these social patterns may eventually dominate intellectual and Dynamic interests rather than serve them (as governments and commercial organizations sometimes do with university curriculums). Thus when Platt states that “Governments… never hand out taxpayer money without strings attached, including to universities” the morality of these conditions depend
on whether or not they are social or intellectual. Only if the conditions undermine intellectual independence are they immoral and is why Pirsig emphasized in ZMM that the true Church man in the university system must maintain the (intellectual value of) truth no matter what the social pressures are.
Similarly, the morality of the stipend that Pirsig received from the Guggenheim Foundation for writing LILA again depends on whether, or not, the conditions limited intellectual independence. However, it would certainly be moral for a government or a private organization such as the Guggenheim to set certain restrictions e.g. that a grant be spent on an intellectual purpose and not a biological one such as buying alcohol. As far as “commercial interests” are concerned, no doubt they bestow grants “on ivory
tower professors” to provide the high quality engineers, science and business graduates so essential to maintain the profits of these commercial interests.
Finally, to state that “To put artists in the same category of police, soldiers, doctors and employers is an insult to all” strikes me as a very strange comment coming from someone purporting to support the MOQ and who occasionally likes to eulogize about the merits of beauty. Let’s put it this way, doctors maintain the stability of biological patterns; employers, soldiers and police maintain the stability of social patterns all of which, in an ideal world, serve intellectual purposes (at least, in the MOQ they
do). While, art may not directly contribute to maintaining the stability of the lower static levels necessary for the “well-being” of the intellectual level, it provides us with the intuitive insight to the beauty and mystery of the universe. Without this draw of the Dynamic, the existence of the static levels (and especially the intellectual) is considerably diminished. Northrop’s “The Logic of the Sciences and Humanities” makes this latter point very well.
Yours qualitatively,
Anthony.
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