David and squad,
I have been trying to figure out just what is wrong with your ideas and I
think I finally have it.
You are applying the morality of the inorganic and biological levels to
the intellectual level. It is true that all actions are moral below the
sentient level because evolutionary Quality is operating in a non-sentient
universe and therefore all of its results are good and have value. None of
the inorganic and biological entities can do anything but adapt to the
demands of the physical universe as expressed in the workings of Quality
therefore all is good and has value.
When we come to the sentient level all is not good and has value. Quality
is still operating and generating good and value as before but now we have
sentience which means that not all situations which confront us are good
and have value because some of them are the result of the operation of
sentience. We have moral questions generated by humanity which are immoral.
>From humanities stance with regard to the universe and biosphere to robbing
the corner liquor store many immoral questions confront us. We can no
longer say that the universe has nothing but good and value because it has
now been contaminated by sentience. Pirsig's statement about morality does
not conflict with this view because he is simply referring to two otherwise
moral situations. He says nothing about immoral situations.
It my mind the problem that Pirsig, and the rest of us have is that we
persist is lumping pre-sentient and post-sentient morality together and it
cannot be done. Ken Clark
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:14 BST