ELEPHANT TO STRUAN, 3WD, PLATT, HORSE, MARK, JON...
The morality thing has really caught fire, so I'll talk about that.
STRUAN:
> This conversation has reached its natural conclusion and I don't seem to
> have said anything new, so I withdraw.
ELEPHANT:
I am (again) disappointed with myself for having failed to consider your
considerations with the tone of voice that would have encouraged your
continuing input Struan.
If my attempts to meet your substantive points fare any better on this
occasion, perhaps we can look forward to your renewed participation.
The consideration that it seems I should really have considered at greater
length was your point about Pirsig saying that Quality=Morality, while I say
that Good is not the same as morality. You announced this as trap laid as a
debating point, and I, fool that I am, then treated it as such. I dismissed
your point with the breifest possible restatement of the perfect
compatability that exists between saying that static quality is morality and
saying that dynamic quality is not, without pausing, for instance, to look
at the different things 'morality' might mean in the context. The result
has been confusion about what I was saying, coupled with apparent clarity
about my position contradicting Pirsigs. IMO this confusion and this
apparent clarity could only exist together, because if we can take the time
to be be clear about what both I and Pirsig have said, the idea that I have
been contradicting Pirsig will be seen to be based on confusion. My error
in my first reply was to assert that it is based on one confusion. In fact
it is based on two.
The two questions which we must ask to clarify the situation are (1) is it
static or dynamic quality that is the same as morality?, and (2) what is
meant by 'morality' when we say that morality is the same as Static Quality
but not the same as Dynamic Quality?
(1) Is it static or dynamic quality that is the same as morality?
Here I stand by my original comment but with some elaboration. I wrote:
"It seems to me that morality corresponds to static patterns of quality, and
this entirely accords with my idea that morality is the application of
intellect to the intellectual formalisation of a reality which is
preintellectual, ie Dynamic Quality. Static Quality is Morality: that's
what Pirsig was saying. Dynamic Quality is not Morality: that's what I was
saying. So, no conflict."
The elaboration is two fold. First, I would say that all static patterns
are moral systems. This is exactly what Pirsig is saying when he suggests
that 'wants' can be substituted for 'tends' in statements of physical laws.
These are static (inorganic) patterns he is talking about, and his
application of morality to them, and his claim that morality is quality, is,
in this context, the claim that Static Quality = Morality, not the larger
claim that there is no kind of quality which isn't also a morality. Second,
I would point out that 'morality' here means systems and theories about how
the world works. This might apply equally to the behaviour of electrons and
to the Victorian social code (and conventional morality generally), but it
is obviously not what Pirsig means by 'morality' in all cases. So we also
have to think about 'morality' refering to more than one kind of thing, just
as we have to think about 'quality' refering to more than one kind of thing.
This I address in (2).
(2) What does 'morality' mean?
When we say that static quality is morality, we mean that static patterns of
value are moralities. But they are moralities in the sense that a body of
conentions constitutes morality. An electron does the morally right thing
in the same way that a victorian gentleman does the morally right thing.
That is, they follow the RULES. An electron wants to accelerate under such
and such circumstances, in just the same way that a gentleman would always
want to hold the door open for a lady. Such is one meaning of 'Morality'.
Now on such a conception of morality it is plain that static quality=static
morality. That is what Pirsisg says. But it is equally plain that this
morality of rules cannot possibly equal Dynamic Quality. The former is a
linguistic entity, the latter prelinguistic. So on this conception of
morality dynamic quality is not morality. This is what I was saying. Still
no incombatibility between my statements and Pirsig's.
But there is a second meaning of 'morality', isn't there? This notion of
morality isn't just the rules that govern the patterns which operate within
the Levels, but some way of comparing the comparative values of the levels.
And in this context Pirsig talks about some levels being more moral than
others because they are more dynamic. So perhaps we should say that Dynamic
Quality=Dynamic Morality? In short, 'No!', and this has been in part the
subject of my posts on the levels in Focus. The reason that dynamic quality
is not the same as dynamic morality is that the dynamic morality is derived
from the claims of the dynamic quality: it is about what you have to do to
pursue the good, it is not the good itself. In the case of static morality
and static quality, the two are the same because the value of a static
pattern is not derived from the static quality, it *is* the static quality.
The relation between a static pattern and dynamic quality is a different
one, because a pattern which is good because it can lead to enjoyment of
dynamic quality has an *instrumental* relationship to the good, and not an
*equality* relationship with the good. Tickets are good because they get us
on planes. But tickets are not intercontinental air journeys, they are
small bits of paper.
This was the point of my perfectly serviceable analogy of the tubemap. I
outlandishly supposed that we could see London as a hub of Dynamic Quality.
We need morality to tell us what the best way of navigating this hub is, how
to get the very best out of it. So a london tube map, and likewise the
listings magazine TimeOut, would constitute a set of instructions which have
their value only as instruments to our encountering the good. If they get
us lost and deliver us to bad gigs with talentless numbskulls we shall
conclude that they weren't much cop and look for another guide.
Now IMO Lila the novel presents an antropogical map of the American soul
which rather resembles the tubemap I have been talking about, in that it's
purpose is to ennable Phadrus to understand the patterns he is dealing with
in Lila the person, with the (laudable) aim he appoints for himself of
trying to help her towards dynamic quality, out of the 'stuck' patterns of
static quality that hold her down. He fails, but this doesn't detract from
my analysis of the nature of the enterprise.
So here we have a second kind of morality, in that Phadrus's moral purpose
isn't to follow the RULES but to help people towards Dynamic Quality, in
this case in direct contradiction of the rules. But this kind of morality
isn't *the same as* quality, because quality is *what it aims at*. If
things could be the same as what they aim at, then war would be victory,
philosophy would be truth, and darts would be dart boards. As it is, things
are rather different.
I think I've done enough to show that the situation is a mite more complex
than Struan pretends in his debating point, and a little more difficult to
explain than I made out in my bad tempered dismissal of his debating point.
But the fact remains: my assertion that morality and the good are not the
same is perfectly combatible with Pirsigs claim that quality and morality
are the same. Atleast, they are when you bother to be puzzled about them.
ELEPHANT, P.
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