From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 18:39:04 BST
Hi Matt,
>Attempting to find a method and science of history, as you would readily
>agree, is doomed to failure. There are simply too many factors that could
>go into an event, a number that is so close to infinite that it shouldn't
>even be attempted to count how many. Hegel knew this, which is why he said
>that "the Owl of Minerva spreads her wings when the dust of civilization
>settles" (or something like that, I don't have my copy of the Phenomenolgy
>with me). His point was that we would never have perfect prediction
>success until everything had already happened. This was his basis for
>Absolute Mind. But the positing of Absolute Mind does nothing for us in
>practice, here in the present. We may be able to come up with a causal
>explanation for everything, after the fact, but I think there is very
>little reason for us to think that we will ever be able to get good causal
>prediction success on our day-to-day living, or even with the broad
>viccistitudes of history. As long as people
>keep using their imagination and doing the unexpected, how could we? And
>if we can't get this science of History, I see very little point in saying
>that Morality is all expectation.
J:
I think we have very good causal predictive success. Don't forget about all
the billions of expectations that come true every second, like, our feet
remaining on the ground, water freezing in the cold, etc. Those are all
moral patterns. It does get harder when trying to predict what peope will
do, because there is so long a delay between a cause and seeing its effect,
and its so hard to understand why some causes outweigh others. I don't
think "imagination" is hard to understand, it is a game we play, a social
role we fill, we are expected to try and find "imaginative" solutions to new
things, and we can't help but have ideas come together in our minds, we are
constantly combining Pirsig and Rorty and Edwards and thinking about
paintings and poems and physics and if a relationship between them seems to
be beautiful in the way that other beautiful relationships are beautiful,
then we take note.
>Matt:
>Your point continually is that static patterns are by which we judge
>morality. They are morality. My point is simply that the static patterns
>by which we judge were acts of imagination, acts that were unexpected at
>their time. To call these acts of imagination immoral seems a little
>silly, though correct to history. But to call these acts moral is a little
>Whiggish, it is only after their fact that we can call them moral. In
>other words, like Nietzsche's ubermensch, they created their own morality.
>I don't think we need to reconcile these two treatments of the past. We
>simply need to note when we are trying to reconstruct how the past thought
>of itself and, distinct from this, when we are drawing up a narrative of
>progress for ourselves or our community.
OK
>When we look to the present, I think it becomes even sillier to get upset
>about static vs DQ. When you think of the labeling of DQ as, at best a
>prediction of its success, a compliment we pay to something that we predict
>will be good, it becomes silly to say that you are acting immorally. You
>are creating your own morality and, if it catches on, other people will
>start following your moral code.
J:
Until it becomes the expected pattern, it is immoral. I don't like the idea
of individual "moral codes", especially when a person's purported moral code
and their actual moral code are often light years apart. People are a
little too worried these days about being immoral, which is ironic, given
that no one really believes in Hell anymore, or, supposedly, what other
people think. Self-righteousness is really at an all-time high, and the
anger of people who feel their morality has been questioned is perhaps
masking some internal doubt. It's wrong to be immoral, and it's not OK to
be wrong, but hey, it's OK after all, just admit it is wrong, repent. The
only thing that's not OK is to say that it isn't wrong to be wrong. Wrong
things can become right, but it doesn't mean they started out that way.
>The static vs. DQ cashes out to be a conservative vs. progressive battle.
>The conservatives are sometimes right. But then so are the progressives.
>We need both to hold society together. As Pirsig says, we need both static
>and Dynamic. The reverance of DQ is simply the homage we pay to great acts
>of imagination, those acts that created who we are today. To say that
>Morality is _only_ constituted by expectation, by static patterns, I think
>leaves out the act of imagination that will create its own morality, its
>own form of life. That, I think, is silly.
I think imagination is a compliment too, and is easily explained by the
confluence of static patterns. Copernicus had influences, those influences
WERE Copernicus. And the culture which created Copernicus was in turn
influenced by Copernicus and eventually paid him the compliment that he was
imaginative.
>I also think it is silly to say that we should, "immerse ourselves in
>culture," because culture is already ubiquitous. As you've pointed out, we
>can't escape history. To that same point, we can't escape the culture we
>were born into, we cannot leap out of our skins. There is a sense in which
>we can geographically run to another culture, or run away to the mountains,
>but we don't lose "culture," we simply exchange the culture of an American
>for that of an Indian Buddhist or Montana hermit. I don't think either
>choice, staying or going, has a good chance of making us more moral, or of
>expanding morality. Its too hard to say. When Thoreau left for Walden, he
>came back with some keen insights. The Buddha too when he left for
>solitude. It is just too hard to predict. You never know when or where
>the next kulterbarer will appear.
But isn't trying to "leap out of out skins" clearly the opposite of
"immersing ourselves in culture". What I mean is we shouldn't always be
trying to escape history, we should immerse ourselves in it. Sure, we
always are, but aren't we saying the same thing?
>I also would stop short of your expansion metaphor for morality. I think
>in some cases, some forms of life (in the Wittgensteinian sense) are best
>left to die. The Aryan supremacy one, for instance. When you use an
>expansion metaphor, it leads us to think that we must continually try and
>save all our intuitions. But after realizing that we are all irrevocably
>in history, we can never escape our contingent history (what I've been
>calling the "contingent turn"), we realize that our intuitions are simply
>the ones we happen to be given by our forefathers, the ones that they, in
>some cases, created by acts of imagination. When you realize this, you
>begin to exercize your own imagination and think, "what if some of their
>intuitions aren't as good as maybe..." and then you come up with a creative
>alternative. The new intuition sometimes replaces the old one, it isn't
>necessarily kept. In some cases you can synthesize (like the creation of a
>practical public/private split whe
>n attempts to preserve the Ancient polis-centered political ideals
>alongside the Modern individual-centered political ideals), but in others,
>you can't (like Aryan supremacy).
I agree that some patterns are best (from our point of view) left to die.
But if they are a moral pattern, if they describe the most probable
behavior, then morally, they should be followed. They simply probably will
be, there's no point in arguing. It takes another moral pattern to override
the old one, which can happen in a moment, and then all of a sudden, people
have different expectations about what most people would do. Morality
changes. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be expanded, I think the
growth of patterns, the self-enlargement of morality, the constant
differentiation into ever-greater detail, is good.
>Johnny said:
>DQ to me is the force that sums all our expectations (it gave them to us in
>the first place) and carries the patterns forward in the way that maximizes
>satisfaction from individual expectations being realized (over the long
>haul, not at every moment, thus lunatics can't be satisfied by expecting to
>fly or something strange like that), which results in the most enlarged
>point, the hugest mass of patterns all expected by consciousness.
>
>Matt:
>I've been suggesting that you sound Hegelian, and this is where it comes
>out most. To say that "individual expectations being realized ... results
>in the most enlarged point, the huest mass of patterns all expected by
>consciousness," sounds like Hegel's idea of the Absolute Spirit. And it
>just sounds like a dead end to me. I don't think it cashes out practically
>to mean anything. To say that at the end of history we will know
>everything has no effect on my motivation to know any particular thing. It
>is particularity that motivates us.
I think it is the same motivation, to know the end and to know the
particular.
>When you say that DQ "is the force that sums all our expectations," I can't
>help but think that you are making the same mistake that DQ-cheerleaders (a
>good, incisive critique that I agree with) are making. It begs the
>skeptical question to be asked, "How do you know when what you've
>identified as the sum of all our expectations is really the sum of all our
>expectations?" That's why I refer to DQ as a compliment we place in our
>narratives of progress.
I certainly wouldn't know - my expectations will always remain mere
expectations, never certainties. The "sum of all expectations" is the same
as "reality" and the same problems of knowing apply to both.
Johnny
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