Hi David L. and Group:
David, your critique of the MOQ based on a reductio ad absurdum
argument just won’t wash. (I assume your “drop acid” scenario was
meant to demonstrate the falseness of the MOQ through ridicule.)
According to the MOQ, the reigning moral code during war is kill or
be killed, i.e., the Code of the Jungle.
Truman’s decision to drop the atom bomb was literally a no brainer.
There was nothing intellectual or “mystic” about it. Morally the
decision didn’t have to go any higher than the social-biological level.
Pirsig makes this clear in Lila, Chapter 24. To quote just one
relevant section:
“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.”
Or an atom bomb.
You may not agree with Pirsig’s analysis of how the world works.
But my reading of Chapter 24 says he has no moral qualms about
killing those who are out to kill him.
Me neither.
Platt
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