Hi Jonathan, Dan, David B. and Group:
Thanks to everyone for their excellent posts on the question, “Can
the MOQ be used as a moral compass?”
It seems to me that both Jonathan Marder and Dan Glover point to
a major problem in the MOQ that makes it impractical as a moral
guide.
JONATHAN:
However, let’s not forget Pirsig’s get-out clause - there’s nothing
moral about a higher level destroying the lower levels on which it’s
built. That principle rules out certain “more dynamic” choices. In
the end, the MoQ doesn’t really tell us how to make that judgment.
DAN:
In my own words, Pirsig’s MOQ states that of two courses of
action, all things being equal, Dynamic action is always morally
superior. Yet Dynamic Quality cannot be defined and consequently
justified until ‘it’ is turned into a static quality pattern of value.
Therefore it seems to me that to attempt justification of morality is
a fools errand, a wild goose chase.
So if I may sum up Dan’s and Jonathan’s position, Pirsig’s moral
compass comes with directions that tells us to follow a course
that’s Dynamic, but the needle in the compass can’t tell us in
which direction the Dynamic lies until after we get there.
David Buchanan insists that Pirsig’s levels can serve as moral
guides. Yet, the inability to come to agreement about what the
levels tell us about how to act in any particular situation (such as
dropping the atom bomb on Japan to end the war) demonstrates
the weakness of the “level” approach. As Jonathan said, “The first
rule of compasses is that they should be easy to read and
unambiguous.” By that measure, the MOQ fails to deliver.
Still, I’m far from satisfied with the alternative proposed by Jonathan
and others about relying on man’s innate moral sense to guide us,
the problem being how to explain Mao, Stalin, and Hitler not to
mention Ghengis Kahn, Caligula and the priests of the Spanish
Inquisition. Perhaps we can learn from the moral errors of the past,
but the record in that regard is not encouraging.
Nor am I satisfied with the religious or relativist moral compasses.
So I’m in somewhat of a quandary. I’m aware-- thanks to many of
you--of the MOQ’s shortcomings, yet unwilling to give up on it. It’s
intellectual approach to moral questions has great appeal for me,
and I still think--perhaps too stubbornly--that’s there’s a practical
moral compass hiding in it somewhere.
Platt
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