Jon,
Hey, sorry this took so long but I've benn away...
JON:
> As things worked out, my "emotivism" post from last month preempted
> the selection of the July topic. I'm still waiting for Rick to reply to
> that, but appreciate his "diligence" in not rushing things.
RICK:
Oops, I totally forgot about that post...
> ====
>
> RICK writes:
> <<< I want to start by saying that I've been a little bothered the fact
> that
> this thread is running mainly under the heading "Science or Emotivism?"
> because I feel as though it misdirects the thrust of the topic. The
> main
> question should be more like, "How can we discern the respective level
> for
> any individual pattern?" The idea of science/emotivism doesn't come into
> play until we start speculating on the consequences of asking this
> initial
> question.>>>
>
JON:
> Let me put aside the "levels" issue for now, because I think it is a
> distraction.
RICK:
No no no, that's the whole point of what you carved out above... the
distraction
is science vs. emotivism. The more people play on this angle of the topic
the further we get from answering the question. Instead of discussing
whether the levels can be involved in actual moral reasoning we get stuck
agreeing that thinking/feeling are related to each other and in many senses
dependent on one another. Nobody has argued against this as far as I know
and I see no reason to keep bringing this up, other than to dodge the actual
topic.
JON:
> I consider the "Science" part of the topic heading to represent what we
> THINK and the "Emotivism" to represent what we FEEL. I think that the
> separation of thinking and feeling is a major part of the malaise that
> Pirsig tried to describe in ZAMM.
RICK:
Yes, this "scienece/emotivism" split seems to have much in common with
"classic/romantic".
JON:
The "experience" - the Quality Event - is
> the synthesis of feeling and thinking.
RICK:
I disagree, and I believe RMP does as well. The Quality Event comes before
thinking which is why it was called the "preintellectual" in ZAMM. The idea
being that the Quality event happens, and then our "mind" attaches. The
more
interesting question (to me at least) is whether or not the Quality event
also preceeds emotion. Pirsig thinks of it as preintellectual, but is there
any reason it can't also be the "preemotional"?
>JON:
> Pirsig's 4 levels provide some structure for doing the logic. One can
> use them to construct RATIONALIZATIONS of some scenario and thereby
> produce possible answers to a question.
RICK:
Huh? If you are "rationalizing" you have already decided on an answer to a
question.
JON:
> I think that part of the frustration I feel and Rick expresses comes
> from trying to decide whether the feelings drive the thoughts or the
> thoughts drive the feelings - we're back to our old "cause and effect"
> dilemma.
RICK:
I don't know... my frustration comes from the fact that I can't see how
Pirsig's claim to "great precision" in moral reasoning are supported without
a way to apply the levels to "real life".
JON:
> As soon as we put aside our quest for causality, we can then accept that
> thoughts and feelings naturally drift along together, and thus the
> answer to the question of the month may simple be "MU, unask the
> question".
RICK:
Please forgive me Jon, but this feels like the same baseless garbage that
Pirsig was given when he asked if the suffering of the people killed by the
A-bomb was an illusion and his teacher answered 'yes"..... MU may unask the
question, but it leaves us no more enlightened......
Still Good,
Rick
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:25 BST