From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 17:46:56 BST
Hi Johnny,
> Pirsig says that at the top of SOM there are subjects and objects. I don't
> see how two things could be at the top. Does "throwing out SOM" mean
> simply saying that Quality is at the top? That's fine with me, because it
> leaves subjects and objects immediately below Quality, it doesn't throw
> them out. That's what I meant by augmenting SOM with an understanding of
> how Morality is primary.
Immediately below Quality are not subjects and objects but static and
Dynamic Quality. Immediately below static Quality are four levels of
static patterns consisting of inorganic, biological, social and
intellectual values. Those values plus DQ cover everything, so there's no
need to go back to SOM. Of course, you can if you want to except I guess
you can't because you claim you have no free will. :-)
Platt quotes Pirsig:
> >"The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals.
> >Subject-object science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no
> >objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or
> >oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single
> >moral.
> Look in Bibles, listen to your family at dinner, listen to your teacher or
> preacher or neighbor, read Shakespeare, you'll find lots of morals. What,
> these instruments aren't objective enough? Well, you just need to
> calibrate them better, adjust them for historical skew. An uncalibrated
> microscope won't give you very objective results either.
If I follow your advice, what will I hear or see? Words. Words without
reference to anything tangible. A picture of the Ten Commandments hardly
qualifies as "objective." If you can invent an instrument that will detect
a moral, please let me know so I can invest all my money in it. :-)
> >There aren't any there. They are all in your head. They exist only in your
> >imagination.
>
> Yes, but they were put there by real things which are visible if you look
> in the right place. The moral pattern has to be propogated by something,
> Pirsig says they are propogated and supported by the level underneath them.
Show me.
> >From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world
> >is a completely purposeless, valueless place.
>
> How does the language "pattern of value" give value? How does simply
> saying that "DQ gives purpose" give purpose? Isn't that pretty
> tautological?
Language doesn't give value. Value is inherent in things. DQ doesn't give
purpose. DQ is a symbol for the force that creates things and makes them
better.
> How will people seeing the world and the people and things
> in it as patterns of value, and not real things, make them respect people
> and their things more?
Patterns of value are "real things." Whether people should respect people
more depends I think on whom you designate as deserving more respect. I
don't give a blank respect check to everyone.
> Seems to me it leaves it just as purposeless, and
> makes people more callous to their shared environment. At least in SOM, we
> believe that pain really hurts someone, and isn't just a metaphysical
> pattern. In SOM, purpose and value come from the culture, and SOM doesn't
> deny that the culture really exists, does it?
In MoQ, pain hurts. It's low quality. As for culture really existing, SOM isn't
as sure as you seem to be. As Pirsig observes:
"Some anthropologists were saying a culture is the essence of
anthropology. Some were saying there isn't any such thing as a culture.
Some were saying it's all history, some said it's all structure. Some said
it's all function. Some said it was all values. Some, following Boas's
scientific purity said there were no values at all." (4)
To repeat, here's Pirsig's criticism of SOM:
> >There is no point in anything.
> >Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like
> >machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally
> >wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide.
> >There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just
> >functions. Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time
> >in history, was this the intellectual pattern it was going to run society
> >with?" (22)
> >
> >No wonder you wanted to vote for Alan Keyes. :-)
>
> Yes, that's right, because the only thing morally wrong with being lazy is
> that it is morally wrong. It isn't arrived at rationally, it is just
> percieved through experience, we can't help it if we believe that something
> is immoral or moral. There are rational reasons of prudence and ethics to
> not be lazy, but the only thing morally wrong about it is that it is
> something we shouldn't do, we are expected to not be lazy. Morality can
> fall apart if people stop believing that morality itself is its own
> justification.
Being lazy is morally wrong for a very rational reason. If you want to eat
and live, you have to work. To survive you need need food, shelter and
clothing. Those value patterns don't fall into your lap.
But far beyond that, the MoQ finds morality penetrating every aspect of
the world, subjective and objective alike. Morality is the whole
enchilada. But in SOM, morals are restricted to the subjective side of the
coin. They're not objects, and only objects are real. So morals are up for
grabs, and the door is open for postmodernists to come in to hawk their
foundational principle of mob morality. :-)
Platt
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