Hi Matt:
Your challenge:
> Here, finally, is the metaphysical problem:
>
> What/Who says that Dynamic Quality has the moral high ground over static
> patterns of value?
> Argue and defend.
Who says? You do. I do. Pirsig does. Each of us, individually.
Ultimately all metaphysical questions come down to what you believe
to be true, i.e., the intellectual pattern to which personally assign the
highest value.
The argument is basically the same as one I offered to the MD in March
of 1998. It went like this:
The basic question for philosophy is: Why is there something rather
than nothing? I know of only three rational options, each based on an
unprovable premise: 1) God, 2) accident and 3) ethical requirement.
God is the religious premise, accident the scientific premise and
ethical requirement the MOQ premise.
No need to elaborate on the God premise, God as the First Cause.
Literature is full of that argument. The accident premise fails by self
contradiction: Events fall into causation patterns for no cause
whatsoever. The ethical requirement premise has at least something
going for it. Its good to be alive. A good universe creates life. To cause
such a universe to be, an ethical cause can be assumed. (In MOQ
speak, the universe prefers precondition Good.)
At this point, all rationalizations end and infinite regress takes over.
Who made God? Who set accidents in motion? Who created the
ethical cause? All logical truth eventually winds up here, at infinity. The
American novelist, John Steinbeck, said it best: “The lies we tell about
our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and
philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little Why?”
So we come to my final answer.
Ultimately, the only thing that stops infinite regress and answers the
question, “what’s true?” is one’s own innate sense of Quality. It stops
when an individual (whether cleric, scientist or philosopher) decides
for himself for whatever reason (explanatory power, simplicity,
elegance, coherence, correspondence, consensus), that's a good truth.
That's my answer to your question, Matt. But if you're looking for a one
line zinger, maybe this line from Chap. 11 of Lila will suffice, assuming
you believe it's better to be a person than an alligator:
"Natural selection is Dynamic Quality at work."
Platt
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