Dear Platt,
In reply to your 14/11 9:28 -0500 posting:
As a rule I only answer postings on this list after I have read
all I have received.
My next priority (which I usually only get round to on a few days
a week) is answering a few postings immediately, but only if that
costs me little time or if they are very personal and
provocative.
Your 9/11 8:50 -0500 posting is in the third category of postings
which I plan to answer more carefully or extensively. Those I
answer in chronological order, usually in one or two weeks time.
At the moment there is only a posting by Sam of 31/10 12:32 -0000
waiting to be answered before your 9/11 one. So, please have some
more patience with me.
There is even a fourth category of postings which I plan to
answer eventually, when I am not involved any more in current
threads asking a lot of my attention. In this category is still
waiting your "Consciousness explained" posting of 20/7
18:08 -0400. I was on vacation then and happened to be reading
the very book by Daniel Dennett (with this title) than you
mentioned there... It did convince me ... to some extent. So,
please have even more patience for that...
As you know rules are proved by exceptions, e.g. by this posting.
I don't want to engage in a Chomsky argument either, but ... in
my experience your quotes exposed few if any of the wagonload of
"lies and half-truths" that Chomsky's talk about "The New War
Against Terror" must have contained to justify your judgement.
The quote from "A Rejoinder to Norm Chomsky" only exposes a
questionable argument (suggesting a personal attack of Chomsky on
Hitchens, calling Hitchens' argument racist) in another
discussion (not about factual truth but about moral evaluation).
The quote from "Chomsky's Lies" is far too old to expose any lie
or half-truth in "The New War Against Terror". The argument that
Chomsky must employ lies and half-truths in "The New War Against
Terror" because of (probably) a misunderstanding about a
reference to The Economist several years back does not really
convince me.
I don't admire Chomsky, because I don't know him. I only read
this talk from him. I you seek an admirer, try
horse@darkstar.uk.net.
I use "atrocities" when referring to US actions, because both
Chomsky and Hitchens seem to agree on that. I wouldn't call the
present attacks on Afghanistan atrocities. I don't say all
violence is evil; I only say that all violence is moral only in
the context of (most) static patterns of value, immoral in the
static intellectual pattern of values that I hope to be part of
and immoral from a Dynamic viewpoint: at best it maintains the
status quo and often it makes things worse. I recognize that
maintaining the status quo (a lot of static patterns of value
that I am part of) can be very high (static) quality. I certainly
wouldn't want Osama bin Laden to (even seem to) win from
superpower USA.
My position can't be as easily summarized as you try to do.
I dismiss your discussion habits, not Pirsig's views with "Now
DON'T quote Pirsig on criminals being biologic and intellect
having to side with society against biology again, PLEASE, but
try to think along with me". You keep using the same quotes over
and over again even after getting replies indicating that they
don't convince others. I BEG you to try to understand why they
don't convince others, to put yourself in their position and to
cook up an answer that refers to THEIR values as well as to
yours. That's -in my humble opinion- the only way to convince
anyone.
I don't mind at all to defer the moral judgement implied in my
questions and to rephrase them:
1) What static patterns of value can we identify on a large
enough scale to include both actions of the USA and of the
attackers of the World Trade Center (i.e. they must be global)?
2) Which of these patterns -if any- do contain both actions of
the USA and of these attackers?
3) In what direction do these patterns (if we have identified
them) migrate? (supposedly Dynamic Quality, so that would be an
indication of Dynamic morality in this situation)
The MoQ (according to me) is a foundation for an evolutionary
morality referring to patterns of values. Individuals or
political actors can be understood as separate patterns of values
only in a very limited sense (comparable to the table in the
head-bumping experience of a toddler). When we use words (nouns)
that refer to individuals and to political actors to indicate
these separate patterns of values, they can't simultaneously
refer to them as subjects (moral or immoral agents). Individuals
and political actors in the usual (less limited) sense neither
have free will nor are they determined according to the MoQ; they
are just elements in static patterns of values. Maintaining these
patterns (behaving according to the pattern) is moral from a
static viewpoint and immoral from a dynamic viewpoint. Changing
these patterns is always immoral from that static viewpoint and
can be either immoral if it is a relapse into a lower quality (or
even lower level) pattern of values or it can be moral if it
means change into to a higher quality (or even higher level)
pattern of values.
You would surprise me if you understand me, but I don't have time
to further explain myself now.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Platt Holden <pholden@sc.rr.com>
Aan: moq_discuss@moq.org <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Datum: woensdag 14 november 2001 15:48
Onderwerp: Re: MD Germs
Hi Wim:
You wrote:
> I followed the link you provided 13/11 11:19 -0500
> (www.frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists/chomsky10-10-01.htm)
that
> supposedly exposed "Chomsky's lies and half-truths". Even
though
> I don't like the style of this Frontpage Magazine (a header
like
> "The Chomsky Menace" is clearly one-sided), I dived into
the
> first debate, that of Hitchens vs. Chomsky in The Nation.
In my
> experience the quality of that debate was very low,
especially on
> the part of Hitchens, and the issue was not the factual
basis of
> Chomsky's opinions, but the moral comparability of USA
atrocities
> (which both agree on) and the 11/9 terrorist attacks.
> The introduction to the second link promised an "attempt to
> expose the Neo-Nazi connections of self-styled 'leftist'
> intellectual Noam Chomsky", which (being an ad hominem
argument)
> isn't relevant to exposition of possible lies and
half-truths
> either.
> After that, I didn't expect a lot of the other links on
this
> webpage to other (less recent) criticisms of Chomsky.
>
> If you don't mind that I put your opinion of Chomsky away
as
> unfounded (as yet), I am happy to proceed to discussing
Pirsig.
I don't want to engage in a Chomsky argument, but you've left
a false
impression that I feel obligated to correct. With a cursory
glance at the
site I cited, one can find the following:
>From "A Rejoinder to Norm Chomsky"
Noam Chomsky does not rise much above the level of half-truth
in his
comparison of the September 11 atrocities to Clinton's
rocketing of
Sudan. Since his remarks are directed at me, I'll instance a
less-than-
half-truth as he applies it to myself. I "must be unaware,"
he writes, that
I "express such racist contempt for African victims of a
terrorist crime."
With his pitying tone of condescension, and his insertion of
a deniable
but particularly objectionable innuendo, I regret to say that
Chomsky
displays what have lately become his hallmarks.
>From "Chomsky Lies"
In the case of the Economist, there are no articles saying
anything
resembling the things that Chomsky suggests. Presumably he
refers
to a letter to the Economist that he cites shortly
afterwards, a letter
replying to an entirely accurate article in the Economist,
thus this letter
was indeed "made available" by the Economist but it is
misleading to
invoke the authority and respectability of the Economist in
reference to
a letter. On the contrary, the authority and prestige of the
Economist
opposes Chomsky's claims.
Enough said about Chomsky. If you admire him, fine. As you
say, let's not get
bogged down on that issue.
> The issue should be whether both the atrocities the USA is
> responsible for and the attack on the World Trade Center
(however
> one compared them on a scale of relative immorality) are
elements
> in the same static pattern of values (e.g. the pattern of
might
> makes right, as Chomsky suggests) and whether we should try
to
> break free from that static pattern of values (e.g. by not
> escalating violence, as Chomsky suggests).
I do not agree with your use of "atrocities" when referring
to US actions,
nor do I buy the moral equivalency argument that all violence
is evil.
> Now DON'T quote Pirsig on criminals being biologic and
intellect
> having to side with society against biology again, PLEASE,
but
> try to think along with me
Why do you object so vehemently to Pirsig's view? On what
basis do
you dismiss it as unworthy?
> 1) what static patterns of value we can identify on the
relevant
> (global) scale,
> 2) whether both types of atrocities might or might not be
> elements in each of these and
> 3) what change in such a pattern (if we can identify one)
would
> be Dynamic Quality.
I'm afraid I don't understand the questions. And the implied
assumptions bother me. "Types of atrocities" again suggests a
moral
equivalency between the attack of the U.S. and the response.
Also
"What change . . . would be Dynamic Quality" suggests DQ is
something we can control or determine in advance. Would you
care to
expand on where you are coming from and where you are going
with
the discussion you propose?
Finally, I wonder if and when you will respond to my post to
you of Nov.
9. Did I miss it, or, shall I assume you agree with
everything I said? (-:
Best regards,
Platt
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