Hey all,
Here's a mash of some of my initial thoughts on the topic of the month.
Some are new and some are recycled...
In LILA (chapter 12) Pirsig writes:
> "If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics- Inorganic, Biological,
> Social, and Intellectual- nothing is left out. No "thing," that is. Only
> Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is
absent."
As I understand it, "Emotivism" is a position which holds that in times
of moral dilemma, a person will simply do what they feel is the right thing.
It is a perfectly coherent and philosophically acceptable stand on morality.
The MoQ (of course) sees things a bit differently. In the MoQ, what is
moral isn't what we simply feel to be Good, rather morality comes as the
result of obedience or disobedience to certain codes at various levels. And
as 3WDave aptly pointed out, these codes and rules are themselves rather
complicated, often being conditioned, cautioned and qualified by other rules
and codes.
Pirsig claims that the MoQ's various codes and levels give us the
ability to deduce moral issues with greater precision than before. However,
even if we grant that the codes governing the levels and their interactions
are entirely compelling and coherent (which may or not be true, but for the
sake of this discussion we may as well give over the benefit of the doubt),
they are still of little value if we can't apply them to real things.
Without RMP's encyclopedia of levels, the MoQ is essentially a guessing
game. In some cases, two levels may appear to lay claim to the same pattern
(i.e. family). And often, a given moral situation seems to allow for various
interpretations of how the levels may be applied (try out the MoQ on the
Elian Gonzalez case... was court's decision Moral???). These problems often
creates a "post-hoc MoQ" in which the levels are applied only to justify
some preordained conclusion. That is, one simply decides how they want a
moral choice to turn out, and then applies the levels accordingly so they
justify the decision.
As I pointed out in another recent post, the MoQ is much like Formal
Logic in the sense that it seems to draw its power from its form. Logic
tells us if A=B's and B=C's then A=C. We can put anything we'd like into
this "equation", even absurdities, and the form will always be logical. For
example, if I say all Giraffes are Philosophers, and all Philosophers are
from Mars, then logically--- All Giraffes are from Mars. The conclusion is
(of course) ridiculous, but only because the premises were. This is
commonly refered to as the "garbage in, garbage out (GiGo)" characteristic
of formal logic.
The MoQ also has the GiGo characteristic... for example, the form (or
framework) of the MoQ may tell us that in certain cases a Social patterns is
more moral than a Biological one--- But if we cannot distinguish between
Social and Biological patterns in "real life" then the framework is little
more than a nice idea. Garbage into the MoQ, Garbage Out of the MoQ.... If
assigning patterns to levels is simply a matter of personal choice then why
bother with the MoQ at all??? Why not just skip it and make those moral
decisions on directly on the same personal choice???
Pirsig does give us loose descriptions of the levels and their
respective contents and I can't really fault him for not telling us more.
After all, an exauhstive list of what each level contains would have to
include eveything in reality. Which is why I believe that the MoQ is only
savageable if we can find a way or a method to "deduce" these identities.
The MoQ doesn't even claim to give us this ability. But it can have no
value in moral or metaphysical thought if the thinker must always check with
Robert M. Pirsig to know if he's correctly applying the levels...
It's all Good,
Rick
ps
Jonathan--- I haven't ignored the thoughts you offered in your "emotivsim"
post... I am working diligently on a reply.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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