My comments on Rick's first 'bash' :
<PROGRAM>
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."
</PROGRAM>
<Rick>
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.
</Rick>
I don't think that this is according to the MoQ. 'The right thing' is DQ. It's just
that it inheres in different aspects of SQ. So, yes, codes of morality, religious
intollerance, etc. start to play a feature here. They are the static skeleton on
which the DQ unfolds. 'The right thing' can be the wrong thing as far as a lot of SQ
is concerned. Degeneracy vs. Saviour. Or to para-quote another bit of 'Lila' which I
appreciate that I don't have indexed : how do you convince a religious Imam [or the
Pope for that matter] that his moral viewpoint needs modification?
<Rick>
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.
</Rick>
Yes. Pirsig is arguing that *his* MoQ describes experience better than SOM. With
qualification, I agree. As far as my experience goes, all of science is a guessing
game with trial-and-error being supreme. The supposed theoretical bastions of
physical science are simply these of the most long-lived assumptions and almost
entirely applied post-hoc. MoQ hardly fails here! Ok, we know this really.
Regretably I suppose 'current philosophy' doesn't accept this and requires a coherent
explanation-of-all, but I would argue that the apex of current philosophy is anything
but pragmatic and relies too little on experience and too much on abstracted
intellectual edifice. And yes I would have to a lot more research to justify this
viewpoint as it requires - at the moment it's a bit of a hunch. :-)
Saying that, I'm glad of a f'rinstance in the concepts that apparently span two [or
more] levels of MoQ. OK, within the levels as propounded by Pirsig. I'll go through
of as an example of the challenges of trying to explain one phenomena in terms of MoQ
- at least as it appears to me :
<########
inorganic & Family = 0 : where the '&' is being used to indicate 'has relevance to'.
I think that we can agree on the relevance of Family to the inorganic level.
Arguments against I would really like to know about!
biological & Family = ? : I'm not sure. A lot of geneticists argue that the 'concept'
[= biological predilection to similar gened entities?] of kinship is favorable [=
liable to be propagated] aspect of Darwinian evolution. I guess that in MoQ would say
that this is proto-society being created as an aspect of dynamic biological quality
but being ultimately superior to it. Why superior? Yes I think that 'Lila' employs
post-hoc arguments for this. I think that they are post-hoc because they are/Pirisg
is trying to justify intellect vs. society, but I would like to get back to this
later.
social & Family =? again I'm not sure. Without a lot of anthropoly to call upon, I'll
neverhteless guess that this is the only form of society within a lot of primitive
human cultures [hoping that someone will correct me if I am hopelessly misinformed].
If social quality is an abstraction of family to super-family then it uses and
overrrides the biological understanding of family to superceed strict genetic
equivalence.
intellectual & Family =? I'm not sure about this one because here everything is in
flux. 'Is it right to report a member of your family to the police because they have
committed murder?' This is an ethical question [intellectual] about as social problem
[murder] against a biological condition [preintellectual - possibly genetically imbued
- family loyalty]. Ok, as it is a social problem I am willing to take the flak about
involving the intellect here - but it is according to MoQ that society invented
intellect as a means to help it with its problems hence the ethical situation is at
least proto-intellectual.
#######>
I don't think that Pirsig is trying to create an encyclopaedia. He's just trying to
lay down some useful hints as to what an encyclopaedia should look like. As for the
'family' argument : it's not a guessing game, it's a matter of seeing the impact of a
concept has at the various levels. If this is a game, it is a game of
'interpretation'. I don't think that 'Family' is a problem to MoQ, it's just that
within our culture we associate two [or more] separate sets of phenomena within
distict levels but call them by the same same and treat them as single entities
whereas an MoQ analysis reveals that we've included contradictory phenomena under the
same intellectual SOM category. MoQ 1. SOM 0 (aet ?).
BTW : in what way did you think that the Elian Gonzalez case was immoral? I reckon a
lot of it was, but the final verdict seemed to be the best of a thoroughly bad job.
Maybe a topic for discussion elsewhere?
<Rick>
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.
<...>
</Rick>
I think this is the danger of an algorithmic approach. Yes when you need it ['such
and such an alloy will cope with the stresses we need on this bridge but the expense
is unacceptible'] and you can plug in numbers algorithms are great. But at the
cutting edge of the MoQ? Pulease .... :-) Quality creates algorithms, not vice versa
!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think that part of MoQ is about determining suitability for
algorithmic approach - how do you get an algorithm to determine algorithmic
suitability? I guess there might be some mechanisms but again these whould require
appropriateness of initial input and how is this determined ... ? Is there an
algorithm to understand English? Chinese? Russian? ....
<Rick>
<...>
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???
</Rick>
Well, no reason really, it just seems like a better idea to do so. Ermmm... in
contradiction to my former sarcasm, you could do worse than looking to ZAMM where
Pirsig says [-sorry gotta get up tomorrow morning early and I don't have the direct
chapter verse and line to hand to quote it verbatim] something like 'the direct
quality experience is anything but subjective. In fact it it the opposite. It takes
you out of yourself'. The pejorative aspect of 'personal choice' is straight from
SOM. What is making the choice? SOM slags it of and says 'wilful human' thereby
unknowingly denigrating itself as it is only a product of countless 'wilful humans'.
MoQ says it is a quality thing - and yeah, the quality of the interpretation depends
on a lot of things. [Sorry - can't go into depth - getting v. tired now.]
<Rick>
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...
</Rick>
The emphasis should be on 'deduce'. This is a laborious process. And often you have
to scrap schema, throw the program cards out of the window and just start again. Is
the creation of scientific attitudes an art or a science?
<Rick>
It's all Good,
</Rick>
I wish. :-)
Be good.
Hamish
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