Diana and Hamish and Group.
Diana wrote:
> The full title of the book is "Lila: An Inquiry into Morals". The
> subject of morality is not some subtext or appendix to the book; it's
> absolutely what the book is all about. Pirsig wrote the book because
> he was concerned about what he calls the moral vacuum of our society.
> It all stems back to the Enlightenment, which set us on a course away
> from superstition and brought great advances in technology through the
> application of logic. Reason became the new god, but it failed to find
> a rational resolution to moral debates.
Agree. The age of enlightenment sprang from the Renaissance
which was a continuation of the Greek experience.
> In the absence of a rational approach to morals, and because we're
> reluctant to return to religion, we've largely resorted to emotivism -
> ie the claim that moral judgments are simply expressions of personal
> preference. As Struan's essay demonstrates, emotivism has been
> rejected as unsound philosophically. Yet, practically, it still
> retains much of its power because its alternative - moral reasoning -
> lacks the necessary fundamental principles to give it a rational
> basis.
This is extremely interesting. There was in fact a return to religion
when the "rational" base of morality was God. I know for my
earliest school days was the last of the Enlightenment - Norway a
time pocket in Europe and my homeplace a pocket in the pocket.
It failed of course, rationality could not accept God as a given fact.
Even little Bo understood that and wondered if the teacher was all
nuts.
> As the intellectual level has become dominant, the world has been
> redefined as primarily a collection of rationally connected facts, and
> anything outside of this objective world has been reduced to the
> somewhat unimportant realm of subjectivity.
Right! The intellectual level has become dominant - as REASON,
not as thinking. And the world re-defined as ...rationally connected
facts as different from the realm of subjectivity! Exactly! That's the
result of Intellect's relentless dividing. You seem to take the same
position as myself in this issue, and that's good.
> Much of Lila deals with
> the problems this has created: schools focused on exams instead of
> learning; anthropologists forcing a scientific structure on human
> behavior; psychiatrists defining sanity as social conformity;
One little remark here. I think psychiatry fits the same relentless
dividing by defining sanity as mental health. The view of it as
[social] conformity is rather MOQish.
snip ........
> When we talk about morals in the MOQ we're talking about a far wider
> range of meaning than just the sort of things that bureaucrats leave
> to the church to decide. If you accept the subject-object distinction
> between fact and value then you're still playing their game, even if
> you don't agree with them.
Right, and I wonder if not also application of the emotivism/science
dualism is playing their game.
> But Pirsig traces his philosophy beyond
> that back to the Greeks, especially Plato, and to Eastern
> philosophies, especially Zen.
> If you pit reason and emotion against each other, then, in theory, the
> more rational a person is, the less emotional they are and vice versa.
> This is why Spock and Data are smarter than everyone else. But where
> is it written that that must be so? Actually as Roz Picard and others
> have discovered when emotions are disconnected in a person (usually as
> a result of an accident) the result is not a super-rational being but
> a severely impaired one. Patients without emotions behave less
> rationally, not more so.
Naturally. Intellectual value builds on Social value and if its base
(emotions) is impaired it all collapses.
> But it all begs the question of what emotions are. There are different
> categories of them, liking and disliking, fear, anger, love,
> embarrassment, shame and on and on. When we decide that they are not
> truth, we're way back in subject-object land again. Emotions are
> considered subjective, therefore they cannot tell us anything
> objectively true about reality.
Exactly!
> But the MOQ does not accept that
> subject-object divide as primary therefore the dismissal of emotions
> has no basis.
> Dynamic Quality is that "sense of betterness" "sheer fun"
> "manifestations of luck" (I don't have time to find the page nos, but
> I'll get them if anyone wants them). This is the basis on which Pirsig
> expects us to make moral judgments and it's right there in the text.
> Yes, it's very easy to see why it's been labeled emotivism. Emotivism
> is morality based on whatever feels good to you. The MOQ is morality
> with ultimate reference to Dynamic Quality, which is what's good.
This kind of "emotivism" I gladly accept, but what SOM refers to is -
as you say - the dreaded subjectivism.
> The difference between emotivism and quality is so subtle and > > open to
> all kinds of abuse that I'm frightened to even attempt it. But this is
> the point of the whole MOQ and it has to be brought out. Value is
> neither subjective nor objective, but a third category. Morals precede
> subjects and objects, they are not contained in either category. We
> need to shift to that state of mind when we talk about the MOQ's
> morals. The idea that someone can be morally neutral like a bureaucrat
> is simply impossible in MOQ terms because every action is a moral
> action.
Agree.The shift is subtle, but decisive.
> The MOQ's moral justification comes from the fact that the individual
> does not find the moral answer in herself, and that's where it differs
> from Emotivism. Actually it's the opposite of emotivism. (Which is
> what Hamish was trying to _point out_, no?) Emotivism sees good as an
> adjective, the MOQ sees it as a noun. This is why emotivism has little
> or no justification, but the MOQ has a profound justification.
Again, thanks for to-day's essay on emotions which was affirmative
of (our) idea. Bringing emotions back is one of the achievements of
this group. Pirsig provided the framework, of course.Paul Harkin's
essay also stressed the difference between emotion and sensation
(or feeling) which seems to underpin the biological=sensesation
notion. Good.
PS. What about giraffes?????
........................................................................
Hamish!
You wrote(in response to Diana):
> However, the reintroduction of a single unifying social viewpoint
> seems at least superficially somewhat undesirable : er - Hitler,
> Stalin and to a lesser degree Thatcher, Putin - need I say more?
Interesting - all of it - you really took it all out on the newspaper
magnate, I just want to make one small objection to what I
see as a misconception of SOCIAL VALUE that seems to prevail,
ie. that it means a "good" society .....as seen from Intellect!!!!. The
static social value is the value of commonalty; it may have nice-
looking aspects (seen from Intellect) such as caring for other,
but may as easily manifest as invasion of privacy. It has bred
strong leaders and still does in times of emergency when we fall
back upon its solid latch.
An aside. What other world view explains the metamorphosis from
human rights to killing in times of emergency (war)? Only this
single aspect should be enough to convince people of MOQ's
validity. For the first time in history is "evil" explained in a credible
way and a good diagnosis is the beginning of a cure.
> But then this is social 'leadership' - and consequently the act of a
> society which wishes to abnegate any responsiblity as to what
> happens, I guess.
Of course it is abnegation of individual responsibility - the bliss of
abnegation, turning fate over to a leader who claims to be the
will of the group. In such situations the individual may disappear.
> The ultimate morality of intellect in social affairs seems
> to me to be one of participation - or at least protest against the
> extremes of the relentless pursuit by Global Capital of [anti-]social goals.
It aught to be its morality? But no, Intellect is anti-social value
through and through (all level's mission is to control the
one below) and as social value seems to devour the individual,
individual freedom is the holy grail to Intellect. Pursuit of its values
includes private consumption and Global Capital as means to
supply it.
What eventually will check the constantly rising curve of
consumption-demand-innovation must be the QUALITY
METAPHYSICS (as some tentative 5th level) because it's target of
control will be intellectual value. Please don't misunderstand this
point as Marco and David B. obviously do. It won't turn evolution
back into some nightmare.
> The works of Alvin Toffler and William Gibson do not leave me
> hopeful. Yeah - I know - I develop/install software aimed at > >
emerging
> economies for multinational banks to get my daily loaf .... I'll
> debate the [im]morality of doing so on another occasion.
The Third World need more of intellectual values and it may come
about through economical progress, but the First World could
do with less, but - alas - there is no "moderator" (not within a value
level!). Anything less than full speed looks like loss of competitive
edge and Stone Age seems to be the next stop :)
Thanks for reading.
Bo
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