Dear Wim:
> 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 look forward to your posts, as always. My comments to this post are
deliberately brief as I sense we have more imporant fish to fry in the
weeks ahead.
> 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 concede to all the above so we can move on.
> 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.
Thanks for clarifying.
> 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.
At the risk of raising your blood pressure, I must point out that the static
intellectual pattern of values called the MOQ doesn't always consider
violence to be immoral. Recall "a soldier and his gun." When you say
"that I hope to be a part of" are you suggesting that there's a better
metaphysics than the MOQ?
>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.
We shake hands on that.
> 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'm confused. You don't dismiss Pirsig's views (meaning his values I
assume), yet somehow I am supposed to take into account the values
of others? Nor do I understand why the burden is on me to refer to the
values of others when they don't refer to mind except to disagree.
Seems you are asking me to go one way down a two-way street. I beg
you to understand why others haven't convinced me.
> 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)
Here are my answers (hopefully not too brief to be misunderstood):
1) The basic static patterns of the MOQ (inorganic, biological, social,
intellectural) include the US and the terrorists and are global because
they reflect reality.
2)The biological pattern.
3)Hopefully the West will win the battle of biological forces (killing)
because its societies are more open to intellect and DQ. (The purpose
of war is not to die in battle for your country but to get your enemy to die
for his.)
> 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.
Don't want to surprise you. (-: Might help relieve my confusion if you
could hint as to what an "evolutionary morality" might be. I sense you
may have some ideas for a better tomorrow if we could but only change
some of our static intellectual patterns. But, I could be wrong.
Best regards,
Platt
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