Dan, Dan! What have you done bringing that to my attention? You should know
that I can't bear to read such nonsense without replying to it. Ah well,
what better way to spend an hour on the train?
--------------------------------------
Pirsig's letter to Bodvar - A response.
Struan Hellier
"Disputes with men, pertinaceously obstinate in their principles, are, of
all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, with those persons entirely
disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend . . . The
same blind adherence to their arguments is to be expected from both . . and
as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets;
it is vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections,
will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles. . . . Those who have
denied the reality of moral distinctions may be ranked amongst the
disingenuous disputants; nor is it conceivable, that any human creature
could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions were alike
entitled to the affection and regard of everyone"
Oh David Hume, where are you now?
I agree with Hume, and almost all other Western philosophers, that those who
have denied the reality of moral distinctions are being disingenuous; after
all, and as Iris Murdoch writes in her wonderful book, 'Metaphysics as a
Guide to Morals', ". . . the view that morality is epiphenomenal,
superficial, just a matter of conventions or irrational emotions (etc), is
probably not held by anyone".
Murdoch goes on in detail to justify this statement and explain why this is
so, however, it may be explained at a more fundamental level by Dan Dennett
who wrote in the context of evolution thus; "If these simple replicators are
to survive and replicate, thus persisting in the face of increasing entropy,
their environment must meet certain conditions: conditions conducive to
replication must be present or at least frequent".
In other words, Dennett goes on to write, if replicators want to replicate
they must be able to discern the difference between good and bad, avoid the
bad things and seek the good things. They must, and we all must, and they
do, and we all do, have a built in quality detector which, over millions of
years of evolution, becomes so attuned, so powerful, that it defines every
action we take and, yes, if it helps to think about it this way, our very
being. This is a truth so self-evident, so obvious and so overwhelmingly
irrefutable that one would think that everyone would accept it.
It will come as no surprise to the informed reader that everyone does accept
it. And yet, Pirsig, being, pertinaceously obstinate in his principles, and
almost alone amongst rational people, believes that nobody else does see
this, despite the huge body of evidence from science and philosophy which
makes it plain. In his latest letter to Bodvar he once again resurrects his
favourite strawman, that critics see value as unreal. Note that the question
Pirsig claims to be answering is, "How do you justify the statement that
Quality equals reality?" In fact, he does not answer this question at all in
that letter!! The question asked is NOT in any way implying that value is
unreal, which is what Pirsig goes on to refute. It is asking whether value
is EQUIVALENT to reality. To reinforce the point, most people would agree
that a horse is real and yet it would be fallacious to conclude from this
that a horse EQUALS reality. They are clearly not equivalent as reality
demonstrably also includes cows. Indeed, Pirsig left the original question
untouched. No matter, let us both ignore the original question and go on to
the argument Pirsig wants to address.
Do I think a five dollar bill has the same value as a one dollar bill? Both
are worthless to me at this time as I live in England and dollars are not
legal tender. So the answer is yes. This, as you will all see, is far more
than a pedantic point.
Let us, so as not to evade the issue, rephrase the question. Do I think a
ten pound note has the same value as a five pound note? No the latter has
less monetary value, would be my dull and tautological response. 'Why not?'
Because money depends upon its concept. If everyone forgot what money was it
would no longer exist despite the continuing presence of printed notes and
buildings saying 'bank' on them. Our concept of money as a medium of
exchange enables me to purchase more with the former note than the latter
note. 'Aha,' comes the response, 'so money is a convention?' The answer to
that is that it clearly is a convention. Now comes the intellectual sleight
of hand, 'What kind of convention is a stock market crash?' The answer, is
that a stock market ITSELF may rely upon conventions (agreement by the
majority) to function (one might even allow that the stock market IS a
convention (or combination of conventions), for the sake of argument) but
that FLUCTUATIONS in the stock market, including crashes, are, in fact,
caused by DISAGREEMENT of the majority. It is the disagreement by X that
stock Y is worth what Z is asking for it that causes volatility. In other
words, with the convention shattered, the stock market crashes.
Pirsig calls this a mixture of dynamic and static forces and he is, of
course, entirely right. Does anyone disagree? But what was the point in him
writing this? especially in the light of this question not actually being
asked in the first place? Has he added anything to human understanding? Or
refuted any accepted notion of the terms 'value' and 'convention'? Or even
posited a new concept of the terms 'value' and 'convention'? I submit that
nothing but the platitudinously obvious has been forwarded, albeit confused
by an alleged conflation of the stock market, money and the mechanism which
drives the stock market; a confusion nobody who thinks about it will make.
There demonstrated, quite clearly, is Pirsig's biggest problem. He insists
upon shooting platypuses that don't exist. He invents misunderstandings (and
positions) in others to enable himself to 'correct' them with the stark
staringly obvious. Hence the perceived 'excessive hostility' from those who
think that he has a duty to be a little bit more intellectually rigorous in
his treatment of the position of others. The sad thing is that a lot of what
Pirsig writes (as above) has more than an element of truth in it; but this
persistent invention of adversaries, presumably to give the impression of
originality to highly unoriginal thought, simply makes one . . . well . . .
hostile.
To 'emotivism' and I am worried that Pirsig feels my questioning evoked
answers which strengthened the (to my mind false) understanding of the lila
squad. The specific charge of emotivism in disguise was, I thought
obviously, tongue in cheek and so should certainly not be taken as an
indication of where opposition might come from vis-à-vis professional
philosophers. Emotivism is, after all, simply a critique of all supposedly
rational ethical systems. The surrounding discussion did, at least, lead to
a seemingly ongoing consensus amongst most on the forum that Pirsig's
examples of applied ethics in Lila leave a lot to be desired. Even Bodvar
concluded that the moq should not be applied to every day ethical decisions.
The objections I raised in my initial posting to the squad stand to this day
and, until answered properly, make the lifting of the moq to a practical
ethical system impossible.
The rest of Pirsig's letter I will let pass with only the observation that
theologians, rogues, despots, cult leaders and priests have, over millennia,
claimed that anyone who disagrees with them can't see the truth despite it
staring them in the face. This is not an argument. It is a tacit admission
of defeat employed only when irrationality has failed to persuade
rationality. Combine this with the repeated claim that I am somehow too
rational, when the truth is that I am a jazz musician whose love of the
irrational far, far outweighs any appeal reason could ever have; not to
mention my oft repeated scepticism of reason itself, and I can do little
else than end where I started; with David Hume:
"The only way, therefore, of converting an antagonist of this kind, is to
leave him to himself. For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with
him, it is probable that he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness,
come over to the side of common sense and reason."
Struan Hellier
<mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
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