Re: LS Defining Right

From: Diana McPartlin (diana@hongkong.com)
Date: Tue Jun 22 1999 - 13:50:33 BST


Denis and squad

Having cleared my head a little there's time to read other people's posts
and it turns out that Denis already came to my conclusions days ago.

Denis wrote
>A common belief in this group seems to be that the MoQ will help us
>making moral decisions, and only a handful seem to believe the opposite.
>As Bodvar said, the MoQ is just too complex for everyday life. We've got
>either to rely on good old-fashioned socially acceptable right, or if we
>feel something wrong with one aspect of it or another, our "hunches"
>(Dynamic perception).
>My belief is also that the MoQ does not support Socrates in his claim
>(whether or not it was well translated, but thanks for the research job,
>David !), but I seem to see a lot of people on the LS and MD who believe
>we should use the MoQ to create a kind of "science of morality". This, I
>think, is defeating the purpose of the MoQ, which in my opinion was
>(among other goals) mainly to bridge the S/O gap into a coherent
>*intellectual* framework (i.e. a metaphysic with a lot of explanative
>power).

Learning about morality. Yes there is the idea that the MOQ can teach us
about morality which is why Socrates' quote (whatever it was) was so
relevant to the MOQ. This begs the question does Pirsig believe he's
created a "science of morality"?

>From Chap 13 p190 (Black Swan )
He writes:

Give a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is absolutely,
scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the patient. This is not just
an arbitrary social convention that should apply to some doctors but not
toall doctors, or to some cultures but not all cultures. It's true for all
people at all time, now and forever, a moral pattern of reality as real as
H2O. We're at last dealing with morals on the basis of reason. We can now
deduce codes based on evolution that analyze moral argulments with greater
precision than before.

He goes on on p191 to ask Is it scientifically moral for a society to kill
a human being?

So the answer must be yes. He does think he's created a science of
morality. He's actually used the word 'scientifically' three times on those
two pages. I don't think that's ambiguous at all. Whether or not we agree
with him is another matter, but he does definitely appear to believe he has
created a moral code based on reason.

>Next to this month subject...
>I guess we all agree that if righteousness is understood in a
>static/dynamic context, no one can possibly state that "learning about
>right" will ensure righteousness on the part of the student. We can only
>learn static patterns, the dynamic ones we have to discover/invent (and
>they will soon become static anyway, or disappear if they lack a static
>latch), and everybody seems to agree that deciding which is the right
>course to follow is a dynamic choice.

Does learning static patterns ensure dynamic morality. Well Phaedrus knew
the moral codes but he wasn't moral, apart from one incident. "You did one
moral thing on this whole trip ... And the only reason you did that was
because he caught you by surprise and you couldn't think of your usual
intellectual answer."

>The problem with this, as someone (can't find the post now) said, is
>that by narrowing our focus, we can always justify our actions by
>prefering one level or another, one code or another, by favoring the
>long view over the short one, etc. But is this dynamic ? I don't think
>so.

I don't think so either. I think you can make the codes prove anything you
want. Note that Pirsig maintains it's wrong to destroy the intellectual
patterns of a criminal for the sake of society but it's okay to destroy
soldiers' intellectual patterns for the sake of society.

>As Bodvar said, the MoQ is just too complex for everyday life. We've got
>either to rely on good old-fashioned socially acceptable right, or if we
>feel something wrong with one aspect of it or another, our "hunches"
>(Dynamic perception).

I would have said the MOQ was too simple for everyday life. But, in any
case, moral analysis based on the MOQ is hopelessly complex, so we end up
just fudging it to make it support whatever we feel is right.

>We cannot argue that knowing right doesn't make one righteous while at
>the same time attempting to do just that : defining a "Guide to Morals :
>how to resolve a moral conflict in X lessons".

No, but I'm a bit worried that the MOQ might be exactly that.

On p188 he writes
When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality
postulates that they've done so because it's 'better' and this definition
of 'betterness' - this beginning response to Dynamic Qaulity - is an
elementary unit of ethics on which all right and wrong can be based.

I don't see how it can be scientific when the primary unit of ethics that
the MOQ is based on is not scientifically measurable. We might be able to
verify it exists, but it's not measurable. You can't ever know if someone
else is experiencing Dynamic Quality so you can't ever make a moral
judgement about anyone or anything else. And yet Pirsig _does _make moral
judgements. It's a bit of a muddle.

>Trying to get the MoQ support one view or another is, it seems from
>looking at our sister group, always successful. My take on this is that
>if Lila (and thus the MoQ) is a wonderful tool to *understand* moral
>conflicts (in a much wider scope than before, of course, but still à
>posteriori), ZMM is the book you should refer to if you want to live a
>righteous life.
>
>Do what you *know* is good, and if you don't know, take a break, then
>try again.

This is the essence of Dynamic morality as presented in ZMM and in Zen and
the Art of Archery. Pirsig also says it to a certain extent in Lila. The
morality of the Zuni brujo illustrates it. The brujo just *knew* what was
good. "If you had asked the brujo what ethical principles he was following
he probably wouldn't have been able to tell you. He wouldn't have
understood what you were talking about. He was just following some vague
sense of 'betterness' that he couldn't have defined if had wanted to.

Diana

MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org



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