Re: MD Understanding Johnny Moral

From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 01:29:50 BST

  • Next message: Steve Peterson: "Re: MD Philosophy and Theology"

    Johnny, Kevin,

    Kevin said:
    when we talk about "good", "true", "better", or "morally
    superior" in MOQ, are they actually products of DQ or are they our own
    projections?

    Johnny said:
    I see DQ as amorally extending SQ into the future, and it is SQ that
    determines if we say it is good or bad.

    Matt:
    I've kinda' been watching some of the conversation Johnny's been involved
    in and I agree to a certain extent with what he is proposing for our
    interpretation of Dynamic Quality. I'll simply add these thoughts to the pile:

    I've argued that DQ is an indeterminate quantity from the perspective of
    the present. "Dynamic Quality" is simply a compliment we pay to actions
    after the fact, after history has judged those actions to be creative acts
    of genius.

    In a simple gloss, this is the same thing that Johnny is saying above, but
    not necessarily. As I haven't paid careful attention to Johnny's argument
    (its possible Johnny would gloss his statement the way I would), I can't
    say what Johnny would agree to but this is how I would explain the possible
    differences between the two positions:

    My statement means that, while the current static patterns judge whether
    past actions are Dynamic or not, the process of pushing forward is not
    amoral, as Johnny's staccato statement of his project says. Any push
    forward will be a creative act and will be, to the single genius and to the
    growing community of followers, viewed as Dynamic Quality, as morally
    superior to the static pattern it replaced. This reflects Dewey's notion
    of a "means-ends continuum." Dewey said that as our means evolve, so do
    our ends. This evolution of our society isn't a neat "first the means
    change, then the ends" or vice versa, but a fuzzy, messy jumble. This
    jumble roughly correlates to the static-Dynamic continuum.

    This is how a neopragmatist would gloss Dynamic Quality. Hopefully Johnny
    Moral finds it a good gloss.

    Matt

    MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
    Mail Archives:
    Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
    Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
    MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net

    To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
    http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 04 2003 - 01:32:25 BST