From: Glenn Bradford (gmbbradford@netscape.net)
Date: Sun Oct 27 2002 - 05:17:29 GMT
David,
DAVID:
"The author takes great pride in the fact that his MOQ provides a rational
and scientific way to make moral judgments..."
PIRSIG: (LC)
"the biggest improvement I could make in the MOQ would be to block the
notion that the MOQ claims to be a quick fix for every moral problem in the
universe. I have never seen it that way."
Maybe he sees it that way now. But back when he wrote Lila he made it
seem like his moral taxonomy was the biggest thing since the Copernican
revolution, touting how moral conflicts could now be resolved with
scientific certainty. David, if you'd argued that this kind of scientism
was the failure of the Enlightenment, I would have agreed with you.
It seems that the majority of people on the forum who have offered their
opinion on this matter do not think his moral taxonomy is all it's cracked
up to be. And in light of Pirsig's back-pedaling above, it seems you are
the only one who still voices much enthusiasm for it.
What I'm really bothered by is something you've said before, and reiterated
recently in your "4 Levels + DQ = One" post. The gist of what you are saying
is that the vast majority of people are stuck on the social level and cannot
understand intellectual values and that this feature of the levels, as
hurtful as this seems to some, is simply a matter of fact. Your justification
for this seems to be that since the inorganic is blind to biology
and biology is blind to society, it must follow that a person who has only
evolved to the social level is blind to intellectual ideas. While this
conclusion follows from the MOQ, it's validity depends on the levels being
far apart from each other in some "evolutionary" sense. As I've argued
elsewhere, the third and fourth levels are not that far apart in the grand
scheme of reality. But what's most damaging of all to your way of thinking is
the simple observation that people you've labeled as social-level individuals
on this forum are perfectly capable of understanding intellectual ideas.
You seem to be trying to shame people into your political views by
leveraging whatever faith these people have in the MOQ moral taxonomy.
I would certainly be wary of a dial-a-level mentality for the purpose of
moral, economic, and political decision making, especially if it's done by
a self-proclaimed intellectual who defines the levels to his own liking.
The MOQ's intellectual elitism is reminiscent of Social Darwinism and
eugenics in that they are all vulgarized extensions of biological evolution.
Most people have concluded that such extensions are bad ideas, and like
the MOQ's moral taxonomy, most early adherents were falsely led to believe
that these ideas had scientific backing. Bosh.
Glenn
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:38:04 GMT