From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 21:27:05 BST
Hi Platt,
Thanks for responding.
>
>> I have been thinking of dynamic morality in the sense of the usual usage of
>> the word "morality"--not as types of patterns but as a code of conduct.
>
> Dynamic Quality (morality) is neither "types of patterns" nor "a code of
> conduct." Like the Tao (below) DQ can't be defined.
>
I was trying to make a distinction between Dynamic Quality and dynamic
morality. DQ is indefinable and only describable with metaphors, while
dynamic morality would refer to what one does who follows the Tao.
Describing what one should do is what we usually mean by morality. Part of
what I was trying to say is that the dynamic moral code is not really a code
because it can't be codified which would be to make it static.
>> The MOQ distinguishes two categories of morals to help us understand their
>> purpose. AsI understand what Pirsig is saying, some of our morality exists
>> to control biological patterns, which is the social-biological moral code.
>> Some morals exist to free the intellect from society which make up the
>> social-intellectual code.
>
> As I understand Pirsig, all the levels are moral codes of conduct or
> patterns of behavior. The inorganic code are the laws of physics, the
> biological code the laws of nature, the social code the Law, and the
> intellectual level the laws of logic and the scientific method. Nowhere do
> I find Pirsig mentioning a combination of two levels as a moral code.
>
The social code is not only the law. Social patterns existed well before
laws. Most social patterns are not codified and we don't notice them (since
we are so much a part of them) any more than a fish is aware of the water.
I see law as an intellectual pattern of value. Laws themselves codify
social morals, but the idea of written laws was an early example of
intellectually guided society. Social morality is what most people think of
when they think of morality. Pirsig extends the idea to the other levels.
Codes of conduct are morals in the SOM sense, while the inorganic,
biological, social, and intellectual levels are moral orders in a different
sense. Relating them to moral codes of conduct was Pirsig's attempt to
explain the MOQ and how it could be applied. Using the MOQ to guide
actions is to deduce rules from from the moral order. As subjects and
objects are deduced from experience, a code for behavior can be derived from
the metaphysical moral orders but they are not equivalent to them.
You know Lila much better than I do, you must be right that Pirsig never
mentions such a thing as an intellectual-social code. Anyway, I can't check
for my self since I lent my copy to a friend. I didn't think I was making
it up. I could have sworn Pirsig described human rights as part of a
social-intellectual code.
Even if I did make it up, wouldn't you agree that some social morals exist
to control biological patterns and others to free the intellect and to
understand social morality, we must see it in relation to the biological and
intellectual levels? That's "the moral of the story" of Lila, right?
>> Dynamic morality is a moral code like these (not a static level), but it is
>> the code that can't be codified. I see Dynamic morality as what the MOQ
>> offers us in place of the static absolute right and wrong that people have
>> unsuccessfully tried to uncover for so long. Since static patterns change
>> over time, there are no moral absolutes or fixed standards for behavior
>> that are universally best for all time. "Best" is a moving target and so
>> the morality that we must follow if we hope to achieve it is dynamic.
>
> Pirsig mentions several universal moral absolutes. Remember the
> doctor's right to kill germs and the need for intellectuals to support
> society's fight against biological forces? Some static patterns don't
> change over time, especially those at the lower levels. Some battles
> between moral levels never cease. The jungle constantly threatens
> civilization. That's what is meant by "the thin blue line." No civilization
> can survive without police.
To me, a behavior can be absolutely right for a specific time and place and
for a specific person--not for the past, present, and future and for all
people.
I'm still talking about morality only in terms of a code of behavior (rules)
not in the MOQ sense (patterns). I'm not saying, as others have, that
nothing is true.
I don't think it is moral for every doctor to kill every germ at every time
and place. Do you have any other universal moral laws to add to Platt's 10
(or more) commandments? Moses' laws don't seem to apply universally in all
circumstances. Perhaps you can give me examples that do.
I agree that our current society cannot survive without the police and other
patterns that control the biological level. I would even say that no
society can survive at any time without controlling destructive biological
patterns. But I can't see how to translate that into a specific rule for
behavior.
>> At any rate, I don't think it would make any sense to think of dynamic
>> morality as a static level, but Platt may still be on to something to
>> suggest that the experience of art that we have such a hard time
>> classifying within the four static levels may be part of a static level
>> above the intellectual.
>
> There's a new book out titled "Beauty: The Value of Values" by
> Frederick Turner. He argues, "Beauty is at the core of our cognitive
> abilities; it is also the core of our moral conscience." Later, "I believe
> that the element of the ineffable, the mystical, the intangible in beauty is
> the emergence of that divine mind." Sort of like Dynamic Quality don't
> you think?
I'm interested to hear more about your ideas about beauty and quality.
You've mentioned before that you've been thinking about it.
>
> In any case, I'd be content to associate art and beauty as indications
> and reflections of DQ rather than an new static level.
So Rick's question about leveling art could be translated as "what type of
pattern is one participating in who attempts to reflect DQ?" I think this
is exactly what artists are attempting to do, and Pirsig seems to think that
scientists are trying to do the same thing. (See below for last two
paragraphs of the SODV paper.) Both artists and scientists are "plunging
into the unknown trying to bring something out of that unknown into a static
form that would be of value to everyone."
I'll think more about it, but my feeling right now is that aesthetic
patterns are on a higher level than intellectual. Sam talked about the
"three bests" a while back--the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These
words may describe high quality on three distinct levels.
>After all, what
> "code" can one follow to assure creation of great art?
Here again is why I think you shouldn't think of the levels as codes. How
also could one follow a code to create a tree? You might say Nature creates
the tree by following some code, but then you'd be trying to force an SOM on
Nature as a subject acting on some object. It's all patterns, not rules.
Artists participate in patterns on all four levels as they "create," though
whatever is really original or creative is a response to DQ. Artists
consciously try to open themselves to such experience and make it static.
Great artists are even successful at communicating their experience to a
degree.
Thanks,
Steve
"This aesthetic nature of the Conceptually Unknown is a point of connection
between the sciences and the arts. What relates science to the arts is that
science explore the Conceptually Unknown in order to develop a theory that
will cover measurable patterns emerging from the unknown. The arts explore
the Conceptually Unknown in other ways to create patterns such as music,
literature, painting, that reveal the Dynamic Quality that produced them.
This description, I think, is the rational connection between science and
the arts.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance art was defined as high quality
endeavor. I have never found a need to add anything to that definition. But
one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper describing the
personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in the development
of quantum theory is that although the world views science as a sort of
plodding, logical methodical advancement of knowledge, what I saw here were
two artists in the throes of creative discovery. They were at the cutting
edge of knowledge plunging into the unknown trying to bring something out of
that unknown into a static form that would be of value to everyone. As Bohr
might have loved to observe, science and art are just two different
complementary ways of looking at the same thing. In the largest sense it is
really unnecessary to create a meeting of the arts and sciences because in
actual practice, at the most immediate level they have never really been
separated. They have always been different aspects of the same human
purpose."
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