Hi all,
I want to bring up (again) what I consider to be a serious
contradiction in Lila that casts a question mark on Pirsig's attempt to
portray morality and quality as synonymous.
On the one hand, Pirsig wrote in Ch. 30:
"A chair, for example, is not composed of
atoms of substance, it is composed of
dharmas.
This statement is absolute jabberwocky
to a conventional subject-object
metaphysics. How can a chair be
composed of individual little moral
orders? But if one applies the
Metaphyisics of Quality and sees that a
chair is an inorganic static pattern and sees
that all static patterns are composed of
value and that value is synonymous with
morality, then it all begins to make sense."
On the other hand, Pirsig states (Ch. 24) that there are 5 types of
moral intereaction:
>1. Chaos vs. Inorganic patterns
>2. Inorganic vs. Biological
>3. Biological vs. Social
>4. Social vs. Intellectual
>5. static vs. Dynamic
Pirsig has previously made it quite clear that patterns of static
quality can all be placed WITHIN the 4 levels of the MoQ. If morality
operates BETWEEN the levels, it is quite different from patterns of
quality.
How can we avoid this unpleasant conclusion?
Jonathan Marder
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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