Re: MD Is Morality Relative? (or "Is there anything out there?")

From: Richard Loggins (brloggins@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Dec 21 2004 - 02:57:47 GMT

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    Yes, Mark, Pirsig is a philosophical Idealist and a Radical Empericist both. I thought everyone here, especially those who post a lot and seem to know what they are talking about, knew that. lol. I hope you are not disappointed. You did read his books? This from zamm, for example:
     
    "This refutation of scientific materialism, however, seemed to put him in the camp of philosophic idealism...Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Bradley, Bosanquet...good company all, logical to the last comma, but so difficult to justify in "common sense" language they seemed a burden to him in his defense of Quality rather than an aid. The argument that the world was all mind might be a sound logical position but it was certainly not a sound rhetorical one. It was way too tedious and difficult for a course in freshman composition. Too "far-fetched." "

    The MoQ is Pirsig's attempt to make philosophical Idealism, which makes abundent more sense then scientific materialism, more rhetorically digestable. A less 'far-fetched' sounding kind of idealism, to be sure, but idealism thru and thru. I suppose that your not picking up on this until now is testiment to Pirsig's skills in this regard. - Rich

    MSH said:
    Yes, this comment has always troubled me. "The world has no existence
    whatsoever outside the human imagination." Is Pirsig an Idealist or an
    empiricist or what? I can see how the laws of nature and logic might be
    said to exist in our imaginations, but everything? Is this just some
    poetic enthusiasm from way back, near the beginning of ZMM, to support
    the ol' ghosts around the campfire setting? What do y'all think he
    means? Is there something OUT THERE, or not?

                    
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