From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 16:03:07 BST
Hi Steve:
> I think
> what you are saying is that one person is morally superior over another
> based on the quality of his actions.
Yes. Moral judgments are based on behavior.
> But I'm thinking for example about Conrad's Heart of Darkness where he was
> writing for a European audience who felt morally superior to Africans not
> based on behavior but on breeding.
The term "breeding" reminds me what Pirsig had to say about proper
and improper moral judgments when genetic characteristics are
involved:
"It is immoral to speak against a people because of the color of their
skin, or any other genetic characteristic because these are not
changeable and don't matter anyway. But it is not immoral to speak
against a person because of his cultural characteristics if those cultural
characteristics are-immoral. These are changeable and they do matter.
(24)"
So much for fashionable "multiculturism" whereby all societies--if you
are to be considered a card-carrying intellectual--must be considered
morally equal.
> The original question was about comparing a dog to a human. We can compare
> one human to another based on actions, but I'm not sure it makes sense to
> compare a dog's behavior to a human's to judge moral superiority though I
> still don't doubt man's moral superiority. Now that I better understand
> the evolutionary hierarchy I can see that man has a greater capacity for
> moral behavior because of his intellect.
Yes. And having the capacity for social and intellectual values, man is
morally superior to animals. Humans who act like animals (killers)
should be limited or destroyed "with complete moral ruthlessness" (24)
> To apply the way I am thinking about moral superiority to your
> example...The police are not necessarily morally superior to the DC gunman.
> If he is there moral equal (i.e. he has the same capacity for moral
> behavior), he needs to be held accountable for his actions which are
> immoral. If he is determined to be insane or for some other reason not
> accountable for his actions (i.e. he doesn't have the capacity for socially
> moral behavior), in that case he would be morally inferior to the police.
On the moral role of police, Pirsig says:
"The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that
you can talk crime to death, doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot
directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control
biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society
and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between
society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his
gun. All the laws of history, all the arguments, all the Constitutions and
the Bills of Rights and Declarations of Independence are nothing more
than instructions to the military and police. If the military and police
can't or don't follow these instructions properly they might as well have
never been written." (24)
On the question of insanity, Pirsig has much to say towards the end of
Lila. But that's a question for another day.
Platt
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