Jonathan - wasn't thinking about it specifically, but am now. Couple
of thoughts.....
Jonathan wrote:
> Giving a patient poisonous drugs may seem immoral to the primitive >mind,
but moral when considered as a chemotherapeutic cure for >cancer. The only
judgement involved is judgement of the end result, >and I don't consider that
an "intellectual" judgement, but a value >judgement that any child could make.
Saving life is good!
David Lind writes:
Here's a question...What if administering the drugs decreases the
quality of the persons life even though they extend the length of that
life? (Similar to being put on life support, we've saved the "life"
but is it moral?) Please don't flame me for questioning cancer
treatment. That's not what I'm doing. Jut posing a question to
ponder.
Jonathan wrote:
> The problem is exacerbated because Pirsig contradicts himself. On the one
> hand he insists that patterns, morals and values are all synonymous. On the
> other hand, he divides up value patterns into 4 levels, and divides morals
> up into 5 orders:
David Lind asks:
Does he? I mean, say that patterns are synonmous with values and
morals (I know he equates values and morals) but i thought he said
that value consists of the four levels, and that there were four
different types of moral relationships = chaos-inorganic,
inorganic-biologic, biologic-social, social-intellectual and the
dynamic/sataic isue wasn't a level relationship, it was a way of
evaluating morality.
Jonathan wrote:
> The evil men of history were not necessarily evil because they were
striving
> for hell on earth. They sought some sort of heaven on earth, but they chose
> a wrong path with tragic results. (Were they to stand trial, the defence
> would inevitably be that they were misunderstood and prevented from
> achieving the good that they sought).
>
David Lind writes:
I agree. On one hand, all Hitler wanted to do was rebuild Germany
after it had been beaten down from WWI. In the process he did some
good. He united a country, rebuilt an infrastructure and highway
system. To help unite Germany, he created the idea of a "master
race." And maybe having a scapegoat is a natural consequence to
deciding you want a master race. Good cannot be distinguished without
evil being present. NOTE: In NO way does this post condone the Nazis
killing the 12+ million people who were exterminated during WWII. I
think once he embarked on the path of creating a master race, the rest
was inevitable. In his mind (i'm guessing here) he was completely
justified in what he did. No one does anything they can't justify in
their head. We do what gives us the most (apparent) good. There's a
view in psychology that we always do those things that (appear to)
give us the biggest reward versus cost.
There's a thought. If the moral action is the one with the most
good, are we nor always acting morally "within the scope of our
understanding of a situation"? Whatever I do in my life, I do it
because in my view (based upon my understanding of the circumstances)
it has the highest reward/lowest cost ratio. Is that not moral?
Well...gotta run.
Shalom
David Lind
Trickster@postmark.net
"Life's too simple for complicated minds"
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