From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Thu Jan 06 2005 - 18:54:49 GMT
> Hi, again, Platt --
> As for being moral "automatically," we all are by making minute by minute
> unspoken decisions that "this is better than that" and in so doing
> expressing our "freedom to choose" (at least in a non-totalitarian
> society) at every turn.
Those "this is better than that" decisions express our individual
value-sense. The values ('good' and 'bad') that each of us realizes are
what differentiates us as individuals. Taken in their entirety, they
represent the essence of one's reality. I consider this
value-discriminating capacity as unique to human experience and the
teleological goal of life. That is "what makes the world go around", not
morality, as I understand it. Whether the valuistic nature of existence
constitutes "morality" or not may be arguable. I tend to think of Morality
as human behavior perceived to be either beneficial or offensive to society
in a collective (i.e., relativistic) sense. However, if you will allow that
our choices are not bound by deterministic or causal influences but reflect
the individual autonomy of man's existential freedom, then it would appear
that we are not so far apart on this issue.
> I know you don't buy the Pirsigian premise that morality is pervasive
> throughout the universe, preferring instead to stick with the common (but
> restrictive) meaning of morality as involving human behavior in a social
> setting. What Pirsig has done is free morality from the bounds of society
> and, by applying it to all aspects of experience, explaining what makes
> the world go around better than do our current scientific and/or religious
> paradigms, answering in a way that makes sense such conundrums as "Why
> survive?"
What troubles me about extending the concept of morality to physical
phenomena is that it demeans the very notion of human independence from the
phenomenal world. It invites the supposition that consciousness is an
evolutionary by-product of the biological world, thereby supporting
geneticists like Dawkin's who are only too eager to "improve" the human
species through cybernetic engineering and "artifical intelligence". What,
if any, is the MOQ's moral position on that issue?
Essentially yours,
Ham
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