From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Nov 14 2004 - 18:41:28 GMT
Hi Sam,
> Firstly, does Pirsig believe and argue that
> genocide is immoral? Second, does the MoQ support that argument?
> So I will ask once more: in what way does the MoQ give value to people as
> such, rather than to the patterns of value of which people are composed?
> If anyone else wants to try, I'd be delighted to pursue the matter in a
> more reasonable fashion. In the meantime, I shall just be more confirmed
> that there is a glaring hole in the MoQ.
Pirsig might argue that the MOQ regards people as the source of ideas and
therefore it is immoral to kill them "as such" unless they threaten to
kill others. I'm thinking here of his discussion of capital punishment in
Chapter 13 of Lila:
"What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a
biological organism. He is not even just a defective unit of society.
Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A
human being is a collection of ideas, and these 13ideas take moral
precedence over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a
higher level of evolution than social patterns of value. Just as it is
more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is more moral
for an idea to kill a society than it is for a society to kill an idea.
And beyond that is an even more compelling reason; societies and thoughts
and principles themselves are no more than sets of static patterns. These
patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality. Only a
living being can do that."
So, besides being composites of lower patterns of value, people are the
source of the intellectual level since they think (manipulate symbols).
Furthermore, they are the only current "composites" capable of responding
to DQ.
Naturally if one group (like radical Muslims) threaten genocide on another
group (like Christians), then the threatened group is morally justified to
take preemptive measures to wipe the threateners out.
Platt
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