>Bo wrote:
>
>When the topic of "MOQ as a moral guide" was up my conclusion was that a
>description is a prescription in a closed feedback loop.
I disagree. The MOQ can be used to describe Quality on different levels in
a situation. But that's not the same as prescription. Take the example of
the blind woman who wanted to have a baby, we can see several hypothetical
outcomes with different consequences for Quality. But the "most moral"
decision depends on how you evaluate the different possibilities. For the
woman (a contributor to Social Quality), the most moral decision is to have
the baby and its potential for high Social and Intellectual quality. For
the doctor (a guardian of Biological Quality), the most moral decision is
to guard against its 42% chance of low Biological quality. We can't say
that a decision in favor of (potentially high) Intellectual quality is the
most moral, because the Intellectual quality is not certain. But who is
entitled to make the final decision? The MOQ doesn't say.
>The MOQ can never become an ethics - as in SOM -because the latter's
>"moral" inevitably is Social value.
I agree, but that doesn't make ethical (social) problems go away...
Although the MOQ doesn't prescribe answers, knowledge of the MOQ leads to
the right questions, which bring the problems down to earth and put them in
a context of the four levels so that everyone is clear about terminology.
For ethical guidance, we can use the MOQ paradigm to frame important
issues. Such as:
- Biology vs. Society: all living beings have a right to evolve toward
DQ (therefore humans cannot allow any species to become extinct, therefore
adequate ecosystems must be preserved, regardless of the effect on humans.)
- Intellect vs. Society: Intellectual patterns developed in order to serve
society as well as for their own sake, and their social applications must
not destroy society (too much DQ) or prevent the entry of DQ (too little DQ).
People will disagree but at least they will be speaking a 'common language'
of values...
Danila
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