All
IN AN ATTEMPT TO RESCUE ROG FROM UNQUESTIONABLE IMMORALITY
DAVE IS RUN OVER BY GOD.
Rog
> ROG ANSWERS PLATT'S GREAT QUESTIONS, BUT
> COMES OUT WITH A QUESTIONABLE RECORD
> The world is primarily a moral order?
> Again only if moral means quality or value or interrelationships. The
> choice of word "moral" is not of high quality. It is confusing and it
> brings in religious baggage that detracts from the statement. In its own
> terms, substituting "morality" for "value" is immoral.
3WD
I too have had a problem with the transition from (Quality=Value and
Quality = Reality) to (Quality = Morals). But as Diana posted this
point is THE POINT that Pirsig is trying to make the case for, and if it
is not made there may be no point to the MoQ. That 'morality' carries
religious baggage is, in part, THE POINT. In the fusion of Greek
philosophy with Judaism and Christianity and the subsequent split
between philosophy and religion during Enlightenment led to ethics or
morality being shifted to a minor branch of philosophy which was, in
part, primarily turned over to religion and religious debate.
Hilary Putnam in 'Fact and Value' eludes to this when he says:
(Although an ancient Greek would have said that being 'wise' is an
ethical value. Judaism and Christianity have, in fact, narrowed the
notion of ethical because of a certain conception of Salvation)
Pragmatism A Reader-P343
American Pragmatism and radical empiricism starting with Pierce and
James and carrying down through current Neo-Pragmatists such a Rorty,
Putnam, can be viewed as an effort to build or restore a better
understanding of values and morals and their principle role in
philosophy. If you trace the parallel track of Whitehead to the present
pan psyche, pan experiential, or process philosophy you will find a
similar intertwining of values, morals, and most importantly religion.
I think we all agree that a common basic threads of the MoQ,
Empiricism/Pragmatism, and Buddhism are:
In the end "reality" is ineffable or mystical.
Second all three subscribe to some "empirical" claim, such that
experience, in one way or another, is primarily the source of human knowledge.
Third all are skeptical of any 'absolute' interpretation of experience
because of the flaws in both human perception and reasoning.
Fourth all are 'action' and 'future' oriented in as much as
they subscribed, in some manner, to a view that 'what it is to be real
is the capacity to cause something'. Some 'action' now will/can/may make
something happen in the 'future'.
This last premise leads back to the fusion and split of religion and
philosophy in the Western worlds.
" Aristotle introduces the explanation ' that for the sake of which'
often called the 'teleological explanation'. Here we say that the reason
x happened was for the sake of y, where y is in the future. It is not
difficult to understand the relevance of this sort of an explanation in
the context of intentional human action. (He did this in order to get
that) What is harder to explain is the role Aristotle gives it in
explaining the growth and development of living creatures of all sorts,
including many (such as plants) that are not, in his view, capable of
intentional action. .. Aristotle is at pains to insist that he is not
invoking any causal factors external to the nature of the organism in
each case. ... Instead Aristotle's interest is in the plastic and
self maintaining, self nourishing character of living systems: in a
variety of circumstances, they will behave in the way best suited to
realize and then maintain their forms and structures." Blackwell's
Companion to Metaphysics- p 29
Even though he made pains to argue that it was wrong to see any
implications of a grand teleology in nature or argument for a grand
design or designer, later the Stoics, and still later Christian
philosophers used his argument to great advantage in furthering their
design and designer agenda. Since most moral arguments are in the
teleological form, the reason x should or ought to happen is for the
sake of y, where y is in the future, they can and do quickly lead to the
"GOD problem". Which in turn leads to the "religion problem" ,the
"priest problem" the "religious dogma problem", and right back to the
"moral problem".
Practically it is not so much the existence or non-existence of God that
is the principle problem it is the "To whom God speaks?" or "What does
God say?" which in the end practically boils down to the problem of
"Many Gods" that leads to the dilemma of morals, religion, and philosophy.
It is my opinion that Pirsig sought to avoid these dilemmas by
reclaiming the mystical or spiritual though Buddhism, which is
pragmatically agnostic, but that his logical conclusion that the
question of morality is in the end a deeply metaphysical one, leaves the
door open to the strife and conflict inherent in many religions
(including those of science) speaking for many gods, in many tongues.
3WD
PS
I am still hopeful that a middle ground exists and think I can see a
glimpse of it when starting with the philosophy of James or Whitehead,
both who in the end or beginning maintain that a belief in God is good,
we move forward to the work of Rorty, a pragmatist and confessed
atheist, and read that in a move toward a "world as a moral order":
"The crucial move in this reinterpretation is to think of the moral
self, THE EMBODIMENT OF RATIONALITY, not as ... somebody who can
distinguish her 'self' from her talents and interests and views about
the good, but as a network of beliefs, desires, and emotions with
nothing behind it -no substrate behind the attributes. [Qualities] For
purposes of moral and political deliberation and conversation, [or for
Pirsig ALL conversations] a person is just that network, as for the
purposes of ballistics she is a
point-mass, or for purposes of chemistry a linkage of molecules. She is
a network that is constantly reweaving itself...in the hit or miss
[dynamic] way in which cells readjust themselves to meet the pressures
of the environment. ...rational behavior is of a sort which roughly
parallels the behavior, in similar circumstances, of the other members
of some relevant [SQ] community. Irrationality, in both physics and ethics,
is a matter of behavior that leads one to abandon, or be stripped of,
membership in some such [SQ] community. For some purposes this adaptive
behavior is aptly described as 'learning' or 'computing' or '
redistribution of electrical charges in neural tissue,' and for others
as 'deliberation' or choice'. None of these vocabularies is privileged
over against another." [my brackets & caps] Pragmatism - A Reader "Post
modernist Bourgeois Liberalism" p 332
Maybe Phaedrus did see that 'good' middle ground.
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