Hi Horse, Walter, Ken, Roger, Jonathan and Group:
Horse, your recent contributions to the discussion are like a breath of fresh
air. I cannot hope to match the depth and breadth of your answers to my
questions. You make a good case for “context” as opposed to
“contextualism” and define “relativism” in a way that clarifies what makes it
different from your context approach to moral issues.
Regarding my question about universal moral truths, I thought your example
of the doctor letting loose germs on the patient who didn’t want to live was a
bit of a stretch, and I’m still a bit befuddled by the subtle distinctions you
make between “circumstances,” “context” and “environment.” But these are
relatively (-: minor quibbles compared to a major consensus we’ve reached. I
can agree wholeheartedly with the following statement from your 21 Dec.
post:
HORSE:
Where the MoQ provides moral principles I accept that these may be
universally applicable, but cannot say they are absolute or that they support
a position of ‘universal truth’ which is immutable and unchanging. This would
surely negate an important part of the MoQ - Dynamic Quality.
PLATT:
I hope that Jonathan, another who champions the importance of context, will
join us in agreeing that MoQ principles apply universally, and that among
those principles (subject to change but perhaps as “universal” as the speed
of light) is that the basic structure of the world is ethical, not material.
HORSE:
I’m not saying we don’t have free will but I would prefer that this belief can be
shown to be supported by the MoQ and if not what is the alternative. Can we
show this to be the case due to our experience? Is there something in a
value-based hierarchy such as the MoQ that provides at least a reasonable
basis for belief in free will? (Later) Altruism and free will seem to be co-
dependent.
PLATT:
As I argued before, morals and free will go together. You can’t have on
without the other.
I define free will as the ability to choose between alternative actions. It is
freedom of choice that makes morals relevant to our world.
Pirsig defines free will as “the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices
independent of the atoms of his body.” He further states, “If the belief in free
will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under a
subject-object metaphysics. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of
substance, then man cannot really CHOOSE between right and wrong.”
(Emphasis added) (Lila, Chap 12.)
He then cites the ubiquitous nature of choice at all levels of the MoQ, as in
the following examples:
“The chemistry of life is the chemistry of carbon. What distinguishes all the
species of plants and animals is, in the final analysis, differences in the way
carbon atoms CHOOSE to bond.” (Chap. 11.)
“On the other hand, the shift in cell reproduction from mitosis to meiosis to
permit sexual CHOICE and allow huge DNA diversification is a Dynamic
advance. (Chap. 11.)
“A bacterium gets no CHOICE in what its progeny are going to be, but a
queen been gets to select from thousands of drones. That selection is
Dynamic. In all sexual selection, Lila CHOOSES, Dynamically, the individual
she wants to project into the future.” (Chap. 15.)
I agree that the free will assumption as well as other fundamental premises
on which we base our beliefs ought to be revealed and examined. But it
seems to me the assumption of free will goes hand in hand with the concept
of morals, and I would be interested in what “other possibilities” you think
there might be.
There’s much more in your 21 Dec post deserving of comment, but since I
generally agree with most of it, I’d like to move on to your 22 Dec. post to
Walter where you state the following:
HORSE:
>From an MoQ perspective reality is inherently moral so what we have to do
now is consider actions and behavior as inherently moral. This now turns
things around and we have to look at what is GOOD. Rather than asking ‘is
an action moral’ we have to ask “is an action good”. This doesn’t negate the
free will question that I have asked but puts it in a different light. Can we
CHOOSE to do that which is good?
PLATT:
Here you make a distinction between the moral and the good which in my
view are like free will and morality, that is, they are co-dependent. To be a
moral person is to be a good person, to make a moral decisions is to make
a good decision, to choose to behave morally is to behave in good way.
Pirsig also seems to chain the moral to the good:
“From the cells’ point of view sex is pure Dynamic Quality, the highest
GOOD of all.” (Chap. 15)
“The test of what was GOOD, of what had Quality, was no longer ‘Does it
meet society’s approval?’ but ‘Does it meet the approval of the intellect.?’”
(Chap. 22.)
“We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom
for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses
biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally GOOD.”
(Chap. 24.) (Note use of “absolutely” (-:)
“’Truth is a species of GOOD.’ That was right on. That was exactly what is
meant by the Metaphysics of Quality.” Truth is a static intellectual pattern
within a larger entity called Quality.” (Chap. 29.)
No distinction is made as Walter suggests between Universal Good and
static, social morality. Throughout Lila, the words “value,” “quality,” “moral”
and “good” are used almost interchangeably, leading me to believe Pirsig
treats them as virtually synonymous or at least so closely related that they
shouldn’t be imbued with significantly different meanings as you attempt to
do in the passage above. (Either that or I misunderstand your point.) Static
patterns of morality value are all patterns of good within the moral framework
of the MoQ.
While there is no distinction in the MoQ between facts and value, there are
distinctions between moral levels. What’s good for the biological level is not
necessarily good for the social level, what’s good at the social level is not
necessarily good for the intellectual level. Pirsig makes it clear that the
battles between good and evil are the battles between levels. “It’s out of this
struggle between conflicting static patterns that the concepts of good and
evil arise.” (Chap. 13.)
We can judge the morality of a person’s behavior according to it’s position
and effects within the MoQ moral hierarchy. Murder, rape and pillage are
biological pleasures that society cannot tolerate. (Killing your grandma with
an ax may have quality biologically, but socially it’s very bad indeed.)
Censorship is a social good that is bad for intellect. Dishonesty is immoral at
all levels (you can’t fool mother nature).
Because of the MoQ moral hierarchy it seems to me apparent that even
though Pirsig collapses the fact-value dichotomy that this doesn’t mean that
all actions the world takes (using whatever instrument it chooses, including
you and me) are also moral. It all depends (-: on where the behavior in
question occurs in the MOQ hierarchy of goodness and how other levels are
affected by it.
Can we apply the MoQ hierarchy to moral questions? I used to think so, but
now I doubt it because of the wide disparity of views on moral issues
expressed on this site, exemplified by the answers to Roger’s moral
dilemmas. Preconceptions, emotivism, agendas and varied interpretations
seem to stand in the way. But, we’re not totally to blame. I’ve always felt that
if someone doesn’t get a message, the author of a message is mostly at
fault. In Pirsig’s case, he didn’t give us enough examples of how to apply the
MoQ to every day moral problems.
Thanks for a most interesting discussion, Horse, Walter and all contributors.
I look forward to more along these lines.
Platt
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