Hello all,
ED:
The guidance, as I see it, is a judgment as to which choice will be more
dynamic, the one that potentiates further or greater evolution. I doubt we
will ever be able to confidently make such decisions in all situations, but
the guidance is assisted from knowing where we are headed. More on this
below.
GLENN:
This is basically what Platt said, so I think you also missed my point. What
I'm saying is that you've *already* considered this guidance about choosing
the more dynamic level, but something is also tugging you to side with the
social level. If both tugs have near equal merit, what does MOQ advise you
to do? Go back to the moral hierarchy as you suggest? Well, you've already
done that! It would just be a vicious cycle to do it again. Instead you end
up making a decision based on a vague sense of quality or morality or
intuition, just as anyone does currently.
...
The moral framework is useful for understanding why a moral issue is
difficult or simple, but it doesn't offer any practical value for solutions,
since trivial ones can be solved without it and harder ones are not guided
by it.
ED:
One issue I saw in Glenn's challenge is whether the MOQ could be used for
direction in such a situation. I attempted to demonstrate in my prior post
that it could be, "At least here within an MOQ framework we can look at
where we are headed (more dynamic, higher level of evolution) and this may
help guide our intution, our value judgments, our 'leaps of faith.'"
A second issue I now see is a challenge stating that in these close
decisions the MOQ is actually not providing any additional direction,
despite my thinking it is. As Glenn suggested, "you end up making a decision
based on a vague sense of quality or morality or intuition, just as anyone
does currently."
As I see it, what is different about the MOQ is a knowledge of where your
activities are intended to lead. A static moral code does not give you that.
At the moment one uses some form of hiearchy to help with a decision they
are forced to value one level over another, and they are no longer working
with a static code; they enter the domain of a rational basis for the
decision. In our legal system, the "letter of the law" versus the "spirit of
the law" comes to mind. The "spirit of the law" attempts to assess WHY the
law was put into place. This guidance has helped judges decide difficult
cases.
It is in the same manner that the MOQ can provide guidance for individuals
to make difficult moral decisions, along with, as Platt phrased it,
"Pirsig's sense of Quality comes into play as a last resort." What more
could you ask for? I would challenge other modalities that are used and ask
what guidance they provide for difficult issues. The incredible
disagreements between folks on difficult issues reflects there not being
anything close to a consistent basis from which to guide decisions. I
suspect that people use various static codes to infer rational bases (which
will differ), and then use these variant bases to help guide their
decisions. This then causes some confusion, and a lot of disagreement. What
Pirsig did was set forth a general framework within which particular moral
decisions can be rationally deduced. This, to me, is a marked difference.
I think with more common understanding of all modalities the disagreements
would lessen.
PH:
The difference is that most people today operate ONLY from a vague sense of
political correctness rather than any rational examination of what's good
and bad. Pirsig's sense of Quality comes into play as a last resort, like
physicist Stephen Hawkings who said when asked how he solves a knotty
problem: "I work very much on intuition, thinking that, well, a certain idea
ought to be right." In fact, I would venture to suggest that when scientists
of the stature of Hawkings come to an impasse, it's their sense of quality
or beauty that points them towards a solution.
Speaking of beauty, I'd like to get in another pitch for my favorite
subject-esthetic values. In many ways I join Glenn in his support of
science and its methods, for without science and technology, especially
medicine, I wouldn't be here writing this. And one of the most fascinating
aspects of science for me is its reliance, not only on objective, verifiable
data, but also on beauty. Here is how J.W.N. Sullivan, a mathematician,
describes the "beauty" test:
"Since the primary object of a scientific theory is to express the
harmonies which are found in nature, we see at once that these theories must
have an esthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is
a measure of its esthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to
which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos."
ED:
I love it, a mathematician's test for "beauty." And I thought a rationally
deduced morality was awesome ...
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