Diana, Denis and Squad.
Thanks to you both for interesting opinions. Diana brings us
back to the righteous path and shows that Pirsig indeed meant the MOQ
to be a "science of morals" by pointing to a passage in LILA where
Pirsig says:
> 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.
Yepp, he lays it on thickly here, but bear in mind that the
'scientific' adjective is taken down several notches in the MOQ. On
page 106 in LILA (Bodley Head) he says:
"Almost as great as this value platypus is another one
handled by the MOQ: the scientific reality platypus...."
or on page 304:
"The MOQ uproots the doctrine that says 'Science is not
concerned with values'"
I believe that his use of 'scientific' in your quotation is in this
MOQ fashion rather than 'objective' in a SOM sense. Science is not
a judge outside the moral universe, rather intellectual patterns of
value.
I agree with you that 'too simple' (general) is a better description
than 'too complex' for the Quality Metaphysics as an ethics guide.
Yes, it is its very simplicity that makes it so powerful as it gives
us a universal moral map (the first ever since Medieval time). Yet,
if you are to find your way through a city, a street atlas is what
you need - not a globe. This universal perspective is what all
ethics have lacked up to now. Even Jesus' golden rule or Kant's
version of it ("Handle so das die Maxim deines Willen jedenzeit
zugleich als Prinsip gelten könne"!) are human (all-too human as
Nietszche would have said).
You say (a little despondent-sounding) that the MOQ seems to support
anything we want and point to Pirsig's contradictory statements of
criminals and soldiers. Yes, this argument is on shaky ground and I
think P. is trying to be political correct here (It never suits him
;-)). IMHO the MOQ argument against capital punishment is that human
rights (intellectual values) are better than social values. Under
normal conditions it's immoral to kill human beings, but war or
extreme situations will bring social values to the fore and change
this. It is MOQ's great force to explain these SOM riddles.
To Denis.
First, welcome to the discussion. We have been a little short on the
French sector till now, but then you possibly are an American
in exile ;-)? Anyway, you went straight for the central points and
formulated some tough arguments against my emotions-as-society
thesis, but as this probably is at the fringe of what this month's
program will permit, I'll post the rest to you privately .
PS. Your post this morning (24 June) was good, I am amazed how many
MOQ scholars there are.
Bo
"Quality isn't IN the eye of the beholder. Quality IS the eye of the beholder". (Platt Holden)
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:45 GMT