From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 02:32:06 BST
All interested parties,
Steve, recently, has asked a question that has been needling the side of
this forum for a long time. A week ago Steve asked, "I'm new to the list
so please excuse my ignorance, but does this MOQ actually clear up moral
issues such as capital punishment, human cloning, abortion, etc, or is it
more of a lens through which to view such issues that offers a perspective
of biological, social, and intellectual interplay?" This is a question
that echoes a long list of these questions, one being Simon Knight's
objection (of almost a year and a half ago) which is originally what awoke
me from my lurker's slumber (that was back when Platt agreed with things I
said to such an extent that he even reprinted an entire post of mine).
This is a question that plagues this forum at every turn, particularly when
it enters into discussions of politics.
What does the MoQ do for morality?
I have predominantly stayed out of such debates because I haven't known
quite what to say, at least in relating it to the MoQ. I've always had an
uneasiness with the discussions. It's not that our political dispositions
inform our readings of the MoQ, that's an obvious truism. I don't think
the MoQ has a true political undergarment that is waiting or needs to be
discovered. What usually makes me queasy is when conversants start
labeling such-and-such country as "biological" and
this-other-group-over-here as "intellectual." But why should this make me
feel queasy? Isn't this what the MoQ adds to the discussion of morals?
Isn't this how the MoQ helps us make informed moral decisions?
The answer is, "Yes, this is what the MoQ adds to the discussion," but the
way in which it is typically addressed is why there have been so many
heated and passionate exchanges between conversants about what exactly the
utility of the MoQ is and what exactly the MoQ says. The problem is that
the MoQ doesn't say anything _exactly_, it gives us a new way to
contextualize things that will shed new light on the situation.
I've always felt queasy about chauvinistic, Lila thumping moral superiority
because I think chauvinistic moral superiority is something to feel
chagrined about. But even as we bow our heads, showing a little ironic
humility, we shouldn't stop affirming our superiority. I believe this
chauvinism comes out of the belief that the MoQ is the One Truth. That
there is a True MoQ to be gleaned from the pages of Lila or from Pirsig's
head and that once we have it, we will be able to solve the world's
problems, once and for all. This, I believe, leads to a lot of pointless
arguments about what the One True MoQ is during conversations about morals
and politics. The first problem people run into is the definitions of the
levels. It's really not all that clear what the definitions are from Lila.
I myself had a problem with this, particularly after I found out that
Pirsig advocates only having humans at the social and intelletual levels
(from one of his annotations). In a past essay, before reading the
annotations, I had set the bar with animals at the social level and humans
at the intellectual (from "Absurdity and the Meaning of Life"). This is
the definition I believe Wim and others are beginning to work with. While
some, like Wim and myself, wish to play with the lines, Platt (and others,
I assume) advocates strict adherence to printed material.
The problem is that our moral understanding arises from our interpretation
of the MoQ. And detractors of the MoQ use the endless bickering that goes
on about which interpretation is the true MoQ as a reductio ad absurdum
argument for the uselessness of the MoQ as a tool for moral growth.
The problem is that, once we blur the edges of there being a "true" MoQ, we
run into the problem of it being a metaphysics. The object of the MoQ is
to correctly correspond to reality. That's what some people think gives it
its power. The levels of the MoQ are taken to be seperate metaphyscial
kinds, not lines that can be bandied about. They have to be distinctly
defined so that no wishy-washyness occurs when we dispense our moral
judgements.
As a pragmatist, I don't think the levels in the MoQ are discrete or fixed:
I think they should be fuzzy and ad hoc. I think the MoQ gives us a useful
narrative into which to contextualize our moral judgements, a new
perspective to compare the Middle East and the West, or the Catholics and
the Buddhists, or the past with the present. I don't think the MoQ gives
us a metaphysics at all. I think it just gives us a new vocabulary with
which to frame our thoughts and which, hopefully, helps us make better
moral decisions.
So, I have two suggestions, one philosophical, the other practical. The
philosophical suggestion is simply my earlier suggestion that we pragmatize
and historicize Pirsig. That we treat the MoQ as an ad hoc taxonomy that
splits the world into useful distinctions, not as a metaphysics that splits
the world into discrete ontological kinds. That we use it as a narrative
in which to contextualize the topic at hand.
My practical suggestion (and, to me, the more important one) is that, when
debating moral and political issues in this forum, we refrain from argument
over who has the MoQ correct. We simply offer our particular narrative on
how the issue fits into MoQ terms. Someone can then offer an alternative
narrative, perhaps using slightly different definitions. We can then
contrast the narratives, see which ones suggest better outcomes or offer up
keener insights to the situation.
Simply put, my practical suggestion is this: we suspend debate about the
MoQ as a system during moral and political threads. This does not, of
course, mean that we suspend debate about the system completely. I'm
simply suggesting that we seperate threads about moral and political MoQ
applications (where we can discuss abortion, the death penalty, and Bush's
IQ to our heart's content) from threads about the MoQ as a philosophical
system (where we can discuss definitions, our favorite coligation, and the
literal word of Pirsig).
To end, I would like to emphasize that these are not suggestions from
someone-who-knows, like a teacher suggesting to her students that they
refrain from talking during class. I'm not trying push an agenda as if, if
everyone followed my lead, then the world would be alright. I'm merely
offering a particular perspective from my humble, pragmatist viewpoint.
Matt
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