Hi Bo and Squad
> Dear MD Group:
Aren't we still the Lila Squad then? Same people, different mailing list.
> HORSE.
> You wrote:
> > As well as producing a practical MORAL philosophy. This has not been
> > discussed at all well in the past and is something that will take a great deal of
> > thought, after all the book we seem to discuss most is called Lila - An Inquiry into
> > Morals. The MoQ has been touted as pretty much a Theory of Everything (I'm not
> > being sarcastic) but in line with what you say above, we have to find a way of
> > forming some sort of concensus AND publishing it.
>
> This is one tall assignment and much like the one that "Theo Schramm"
> (alias Struan Helliger) asked for in his ethics message.
That was a surprise! Still, I think that "Theo" introduced a number of interesting
and useful ideas and whether it's a tall assignment or not it needs to be looked at.
I don't remember the page, but I do remember in Lila that Pirsig asserts that
under the MoQ 'Rights' become almost tangible. Rights are a part of everyday
living - I believe they form the foundation of the American constitution - and are
also a moral system. One of the interesting things about the MoQ and Rights is
that looking at Rights through the lens of the 4 ( ? :) ) levels may make some form
of moral precedence more coherent. There _MAY_ also be some way of unifying
different moral systems - Environmental Ethics with value theory at an Inorganic
level, Benthamite Utilitarianism at the Biological level, Mills Utilitarianism and/or
Communitarianism at a Social level and Libertarianism at the Intellectual level. I'm
not sure where (or even if) a Deontological system or Neo-Aristotelian Virtue
theory would fit in.
> The MOQ is
> far too general for ...am I to leave my spouse or go shoplifting...
> sort of questions, it solves the most fundamental issues there are,
> but ..what is good and what is not good do we need to ask..etc.
Do you have the right to speak freely without the fear of imprisonment or torture,
what are the social consequences of leaving your wife, is pleasure more moral
than social value, does a forest have the right to existence, is it valued on its own
terms or is it assessed in terms of instrumental value (what is the purpose of a
forest). Are you really saying that the MoQ, which is all about Value, has nothing
to say about the value contained in these questions? If the MoQ can say nothing
about the above then it says nothing about value. These questions are as
fundamental as questions about the discontinuity of matter or what defines life. If
meaning is value then the question "does my life have meaning" is one of the
most fundamental questions of the MoQ.
> I never consult the MOQ in my day to day existence and yet it hovers in
> the background and colours it all. You CAN apply the MOQ, but it is
> an exhausting business.
And the most rewarding for it can tell us HOW to live WELL, not just how to exist.
The "arete" of the Greeks was not something they studied it was something that
they were. This was one of the major doctrines of the Sophists.
> TO THE GROUP (are we no longer LS?).
I hope so.
> For more than a year now we have struggled to understand the Quality
> idea, and we have agreed on the obvious that the MOQ is "wider" than
> the SOM; the former contains the latter (my own contribution to the
> containment problem is the SOTAQI).
Sorry to be pedantic Bo but I thought that a SO _METAPHYSICS_ was rendered
obsolete by the MoQ. SO _thought_ is what is retained.
> After that realization, to ask for
> a SO-explanation of MOQ's explanation of SOM's riddles is quite an
> "about turn". MOQ HAS its version of the the nature of consciousness,
> the quantum phenomena, artificial intelligence, namely that these are
> platypi created from believing that SO is as things really are ..a
> metaphysics.
I don't think we need an SO-explanation etc. but we may need to use the general
terminology understood by most people. It would appear that many of the posts
are becoming overly jargonised (my own included) - something that Pirsig warns
against in Lila.
Horse
"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.
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