Jonathan B. Marder wrote on Thu, 5 Nov 1998
> Hi Bodvar and other contributors:-
> >The problem for the MOQ by the quotation from LILA about the chair
> >consisting of little moral entities, I don't quite understand. Is it
> >the fact that matter is a MORAL level and thus is supposed to be GOOD
> >and not inflict damage to Biology? If so I think...
> The point is that in Chapter 13, Pirsig clearly distinguishes between
> "patterns of value", which make up the MoQ levels, and the "moral codes"
> which mediate between the levels. In the Chapter 30 passage about the
> chair, he says explicitly that moral codes and patterns of value are
> synonymous. I call that a contradiction.
Let me think this over a little.
> >RICK introduced the morals of war. Was it ethical of the USA to drop
> >the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Jonathan defended it by
> >pointing to the shortening of the war, I agree ...
> I'm not sure that it is useful to actually pass moral judgements on was
> Truman right or wrong. To do that in this example is to pretend to be
> Truman. I do believe that he probably made his decision using
> appropriate considerations (30 years before ZAMM and nearly 50 years
> before Lila). I think our ethical sense is probably not highly different from that of
> previous generations. The problem is not the ethics, but their potential
> vulnerability due to the fact that they have no metaphysical basis in
> dialectical (SOM) thought.
Matter of factly, Jonathan, I agree one hundred percent with what
you say above. IMO it's our "old" case of the MOQ being too general
to use for "mundane" purposes; good old SO-ethics (which to me is
Intellect's value level) suffice. Yes, I will try to expound some
time even if it is already written in LILA.
I agreed to all of the rest in your post , but must hasten to
Sun, 8 Nov where you write:
> Hi Diana and Squad,
> On Wednesday, November 04, 1998 Diana wrote:-
> >And this brings us to one of Pirsig's most brilliant ideas - his
> >theory of evolution. "The idea that life is progressing towards something
> >has been explored," he says, "but has anyone taken up the idea that
> >life is evolving away from something?"
> Nice try Diana, but Charles Darwin had the idea long before Pirsig!
> Darwin's basis was that life was not static, but always moving, NOT
> towards anything in particular, as had been proposed by Jean
> Baptiste de Lemarck , but just moving. Darwin's great insight was
> that just by randomly moving away from set patterns, any
> advantageous pattern emerging by chance would be naturally selected
> and become dominant
> >What the MoQ adds to natural selection is that those patterns which
> >are "selected" are the ones which free themselves from the chains of the
> >inorganic level.
> With respect Diana, that doesn't really mean very much. Biology
> doesn't fight against the inorganic level. The biological patterns
> selected are the ones which make better and more harmonious use of
> the inorganic (and other biological) resources available. Organisms
> out of harmony with their surroundings are selected against.
It doesn't? Really Jonathan! Inorganic values have nowhere allowances
for LIFE written into them. You need not have heard about Pirsig or
the MOQ to see that. The making better and more harmonious use ...
etc is well enough once life is established (not really then either,
but okay.), but explains nothing whatsoever about its emergence.
Life, it is as mysterious to-day as in the first day of Darwin's
theory and a gaping hole in the present evolution theory, but is
eminently covered up. SOM only have these two alternatives:
chance or creation and who want to be in company with Bishop
Wilberforce or the latter day fundamentalists? The MoQ is the first
EVER who reconciliates the two antagonist.
> >"Survival of the fittest" IS the survival of the biological
> >patterns that break free from the chains of inorganic level most
> >successfully. MoQ morality says that freedom from static patterns is
> >the highest morality. Thus, the MoQ says that natural selection is moral.
> That sounds like a self-serving argument to me. Furthermore, if one
> takes that into the human social domain, the only moral political
> philosophy would be nihilism.
"Survival of the fittest" is perhaps not the MOQ way of saying it.
Pirsig ridicules it a little: (yet Diana's basic assertion is valid!)
(LILA p.144): "If life is strictly a result of the physical and
chemical forces of nature then why is life opposed to the same forces
in its struggle to survive. Either life is with physical nature or it
is against it. If it's with nature there's nothing to survive. If
it's against physical nature then there must be something apart from
the physical and chemical forces of nature that is motivating it to
be against physical nature."
This is a splendid formulation of what's the question is all
about. What is it that motivates MATTER TO BECOME ALIVE if biology
states again and again that "survival" is necessary: matter doesn't
want LIFE!!. You say that existence isn't moving anywhere in
particular except just moving, and that's OK, but what drives even
the moving nowhere?
Bodvar
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:39 BST