LilaSquad!
First a warm welcome to Mark Brooks. Your opening message deserves a
lot of attention so I will return to it after examining the righteous
issue as it has developed up to now.
MARY did not answer the question (if knowing right from wrong
guarantees right behaviour) but made it clear what moral quandaries
there are. We are supposed to work for the good of others while
simultaneous pursuing our personal goals. In her opinion this is
a bio/socio conflict, but IMHO it's more of a socio-/intellectual one.
The B/S issue is "solved" a long time ago, no-one questions the moral
preponderance of social behaviour over biological (bestial), but
Intellect's (as P points out in LILA) zealous promotion of individual
freedom creates these pseudo-biological/social conflicts.
ROB starts with a hesitating NO, but then admits that we may
knowingly do bad things and even brings a personal example of
such an instant. His claim is that this is what creates guilt. I
agree with him here.
ROGER addresses the (downvoted) topic of self and soul in his
entry and points to a seemingly contradiction in Pirsig's definition
of free will versus determinism. Interesting enough, but to keep to
this month's topic I notice that Roger answers NO. Knowing right from
wrong does not necessarily make us perfect. He points to the fact
that in the MOQ we have the ladder of moral levels in contrast to SOM
and this is what creates the quandaries. I agree one hundred
percent!
DAVID has gone to the sources and done a scholarly research and
thereby brought a new twist to the issue. Socrates did not formulate
himself as described, but rather said that no one does wrong
voluntarily!! And if this is correct - which I have all reasons to
believe - it changes it all. Wrong in the criminal sense is a social
definition (biology don't know right from wrong ), individually we
always justify our actions. Shoplifting or genocide, we always
rationalize. We may even do things to spite, but we invariably
feel we are right in taking revenge upon society because we have been
treated unfair, been deprived of our rights, taken advantage
of..etc. No grown-up person goes against what she or he both feels
and knows is wrong!
Regarding the other statement: 'Virtue is knowledge' I agree with
David's assessment here, but can it really be another version of the
former? Anyway let me add another proof of its validity? If virtue=
arete and arete=quality and quality is reality, it fits. Existence is
a rising ladder of knowledge. The biological level "knows" (through
the senses), the social level knows (by feelings) and the
intellectual knows by "knowing". An example: a shot of adrenalin
brings an animal into a state of excitement that only a physical
action (fight or flight) alleviates. A tribe animal feels agitated
but if no social signals of danger is received it calms down; the
social surroundings "modify" the feeling greatly. A man who is told
(knows) that he is to receive an injection may feel weird but the
knowledge takes the effect out of the chemical. (I read about such an
experiment and it struck me as highly relevant).
MARK returns to the original 'righteous' formulation and in proving
that people DO wrong against their convictions he turns to
Pirsig's example of vegetarianism and points out that he (Phædrus)
fails to follow his own recommendations in eating a steak during
the meal with Lila Blewitt. Saying that he's only human will
probably not placate Mark ;-), but I think that David's information
of how this was originally formulated by Socrates should be heeded.
It's not only a question of doing wrong against one's intellectual
knowledge, but against one's "intuition" (quality perception). We may
sin socially (as Rob confesses) and we may not follow our own
preachings (Phædrus), but we never ever go against our
total value range; what we sense, feel and know is right or wrong.
He then goes on to face the free will issue in response to Roger,
but as I feel that this stretches the discussion into the self/soul
region - and that this month's moderator will put his foot down
soon - I'll only say that this is treated very aptly. The stifling of
yawns example and his general conclusion was right on the mark (!)
I am most impressed by the level that the LS discussion has reached.
We will soon have a few MOQ doctorates.... and an institute.
Bodvar
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:45 GMT