Greetings, Clark and MOQers.
This parallels some of the discussion on the LS, I think. I don't
subscribe to the LS, but I do follow the discussion in the archive when
I have time.
Clark wrote:
>
> I had decided to subside into my own understanding of the MoQ but I just
> can't learn to keep my mouth shut.
A problem I share with you, Ken. You have my sincere condolences.
> As I said before, I consider Quality to be the driving force for good in
> the universe. Not the same as value, good, dynamic quality, etc. According
> to me Quality came into existence at the beginning of the universe along
> with the physical parameters that also came into existence. Dont ask me
> where any of it came from. I haven't got a clue. We just know the universe
> is there and we would like to think that it had a beginning. Maybe it
> didn't. If that is so that wouldn't make the questions any easier. You pays
> your money and you takes your choice. In any case that is my starting point
> and don't give me any crap about maybe the universe isn't there at all.
> In my view the universe was deterministic from the start and is still
> deterministic. The path that produced us is good because there was no
> reference point for bad in the universe until humanity (sentience)came
> along. Since we evolved from this "good" universe then, as Platt says, we
> are embedded in and surrounded by "good".
This sounds suspiciously like a retelling of the creation myth. Good is
the driving force resulting in sentient humanity who then screw up the
works. Bad is whatever diverges from "good." Leaving out the
anthropomorphism cluttering Genesis, are we separated from Good?
> One of the problems I have with the MoQ is that it seems to me to be
> entirely too humancentric.
Some time ago, before the LS/MD split I think, we discussed the
humancentrism of the MOQ. I don't think we ever came to a consensus one
way or the other. (Do we ever?) More later.
> We talk about the levels evolving to a higher
> plane as life, sentience, etc, evolved. I think that this is not a correct
> way of looking at the human situation. I think that the inorganic level and
> the biological level can at times be on a higher value plane than the
> social or intellectual levels. I regard the levels not as a gradation of
> value but as an intermix of value conflicts which can go either way. In
> many cases the social and intellectual levels can operate at a lower value
> level than the inorganic and biological levels. Surely some of the needs of
> the biosphere should override the desires of humanity.
Never. If you believe that evolution favors a rock over a human, then
why evolve a human at all?
> Mark mentioned the other day about the world population arriving at seven
> billion or so this year. Surely there must come a time when we must curb
> our own desires and concerns in favor of the health of the inorganic and
> biological levels. We are also being told that the mean temperature of the
> Earth is rising. Some of this is attributed to a hotter sun but some of it
> is attributed to our disturbance of the gaseous envelope of the Earth. It
> seems to me that we are approaching a time when the i and b levels will
> demand precedence over the s and i levels. I can envision a time when we
> will have to rethink our application of the MoQ.
> It does not seem reasonable to me that our actions on Earth can have any
> effect on the Universe at large but It seems obvious that they can, and
> are, affecting the biosphere. Maybe the universe is full of MoQs all busily
> plugging away at their own concerns.
> Anyway, I just wanted to throw in the idea that our current concept of
> the interaction of the levels may not be correct and that all of this
> gnashing of teeth over the value interactions between the levels may need
> to be rethought. Ken
Actually, the levels work well, Ken. Free will is simply the freedom to
follow one's own conscience. In a deterministic universe there is no
choice but to follow the dictates of morality. An amoeba will not choose
to go to an acid solution because it has no choice.
A sentient being might very well choose to enter a low quality
environment for many reasons, but it is important to remember that he
does so because he can make a choice.
Carmen, as she wrote in an essay on the LS, seemed to believe that
education was the key to defining one's choice for good, and in a way it
is - if one acts on the best knowledge he has at the moment he must
decide to act. It is entirely possible for the educated person to make
horrible moral decisions.
Hence the need for moral absolutes in a society (the social level.)
There must be a standard for behavior that is understood by everyone to
be immoral and that everyone can measure his behavior against. The
Golden Rule is a good example of such a rule. The Ten Commandmmments are
also moral absolutes. It is absolutely immoral to commit adultery, work
on the seventh day, etc. It is when values become relative that society
becomes destabilized.
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." If you made moral
decisions based on this rule in your interplay with your fellow humans,
then you would always be attempting to act in their best interest. Now
is when education becomes important - to know what that best interest is
likely to be - but education sans morality cannot produce moral behavior
except accidentally.
Noah, Moses, Abraham and Jesus were teachers of morality, not religion.
(If that sounds ethnocentric, I apologize. I honestly don't know enough
about the other great religions to comment intelligently.) When their
society was no longer able to deal with the circumstances surrounding it
they were the catalysts for change through their moral instruction. The
MOQ may well be the next moral catalyst as America finds itself
rudderless because its metaphysics - Judeo-Christian cosmology - is
increasingly insufficient to explain reality. This is not to say that
the moral absolutes of society are irrelevant, but that is for another
thread.
In personal behavior, moral absolutes become even more important, even
as the decisions become a little more difficult because human nature is
what it is. Unenlightened
self-interest sometimes conflicts with morality. Here, education becomes
important again, because in order to consistently act in one's own best
interest, one must know what that is.
Mark wrote:
>
> Finally, not only is a man who has learned about right not necessarily
> righteous, but the same applies to molecules and societies and everything
> else. Nothing always chooses the best known outcome or there would not be a
> "choice" involved at all. Choice is fundamental to morality and, in my
> opinion, choice is fundamental to the MoQ.
I can agree with the first sentence in this paragraph. You lose me after
that, Mark. Values in evolution are either good or not good, but no
conscious choice is made. Similarly with society. "Good" survives, "not
good" doesn't.
The exercise of free will is a dynamic exercise and is what sets the
intellectual level apart from the lower levels. The three levels below
the intellectual cannot act to change themselves - they are static
unless changed from without. Sentient man can act on behalf of his own
(hopefully) enlightened self interest, and as a species can increasingly
act to restructure the other three levels. This why I support the view
that the individual is superior to society, BTW. The social level is the
support for the intellectual level, but only individuals provide the
catalyst for change in the social level.
The MOQ is humancentric, Ken, because man is the measure. That statement
will hold true, I think, until we encounter another sentient species.
Then we can say sentience is the measure. The MOQ may well describe the
inorganic, biologic and social levels after we are gone, but the
intellectual level is reserved to sentient beings.
Following this logic, the biosphere can never take precedence over
humans. We are a higher moral order. We had better be careful how we
husband our resources, however. It is in our enlightened self-interest
and therefore more moral. Again, a moral concept easily found in
Genesis.
The human race has many challenges. Two of the biggest are to support
ourselves on this rock and to get off this rock and spread to other
rocks so that we are not as subject to the vicissitudes of the universe.
Be of good cheer, Ken. The universe is not wholly deterministic. The
fact that you can paddle upstream before losing your paddle suggests
that.
drose
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