Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Wed, 25 Mar 1998 05:49:51 +0100
Struan, Squad
Struan wrote in reply to me:
>Please don't think I am ignoring what you say in the former paragraphs, but
>all that you say leads up to this. My expertise (?) and interest is in the
>ethical dimension so most of what I say relates to that, but obviously they
>are all inter-related and probably contingent.
Okay, Struan, lets focus on the ethical dimension for now. That is plenty
for one thread of email, anyway :-)
But then I would make one request; -- you wrote in reply to Kevin:
>I have homed in on ethics because if the MoQ is not about ethics then what
>practical use is it? Lila was an 'inquiry into morals' after all and I fail
>to see the point of all this unless we can apply it to practical situations.
I would request that we do not consider this discussion of ethics as some
sort of test of Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). I believe there is much to
MoQ besides ethics, -- first of all a metaphysics. And our discussion of
whether we can construct a coherent and plausible system of ethics on the
grounds of MoQ, here and now, can hardly be taken as a critical test of the
MoQ as such. Rather, it is part of an ongoing probing and development; --
as you say, the ethical dimension is related to the rest.
Struan continues:
>If the MoQ is naturalistic then it falls to the naturalistic fallacy as
>pointed out by G. Moore in his 'Principa Ethica' of 1903, namely that it is
>fallacious to define good in terms of a natural object. As with all the
>following, the authors can do a much better job of explanation than me and
>so I will not bore you here by repetition.
>
>The work of Isaiah Berlin is another 'hope,' again the primary source is
>better than my ramblings so I shall refrain.
>
>A. MacIntyre is probably the foremost ethicist of recent years and I
>challenge anyone reasonable to read his works and still subscribe to the
>MoQ. (Short History of Ethics, RKP, 1967 - After Virtue, Duckworth, 1981 -
>Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Duckworth 1988)
Well, I had rather hoped you would bore me with a short summary of your
view. I find it difficult to discuss whether to wear my Quality trousers
today, if they are the only ones I have -- I would hate if I found them
not good enough to wear ;-)
Seriously, I hope you would be kind enough to indicate which sort of ground
you base your ethics on. I am not familiar with the latter two writers you
refer to, neither do I have any easy access to their works, and I am sure
some others on the Squad are in the same situation.
On the question of naturalism. Naturalism is a dangerous concept to use,
and I must take the responsibility for bringing it up. Naturalism has been
used in different ways through history, in concordance with the development
of natural science. The way I use naturalism takes the fallible nature of
our theories of the world into consideration, (only) stating that there is
some connection between how the world is and what we ought to do, between
the true and the good. In this perspective MoQ is a radical form of
naturalism, stating that the true is (but) a kind of good.
Moore said that any philosophy which seeks to define good (for instance the
idea that the established natural science can decide on what is good)
commits the naturalistic fallacy. Taking of, I believe in Humes questioning
of how any propositions on what ought to be (values) can be deduced from
propositions on what is (facts). Moore did not consider good the kind of
property which could be decided upon through experience (e.g. science).
Later on the naturalistic fallacy has been taken (e.g. by R.M. Hare I
believe) to be the confusion of the distinction between the description and
the evaluation of a thing.
Pirsig takes the opposite route of Moore and Hare, he says that value is
basic in experience, that the distinction between description and
evaluation is a secondary distinction. In a way we might say that Pirsig
agrees with Moore that the good cannot be defined by way of a descriptive
theory, because the good is primary to any description, primary to the
distinction between knower and known. Pirsig agrees with Moore that the
good is not a kind of property which can be found by way of observation;
the good is not something inherent in objects. But Pirsig furthermore says
that the good is not something imposed by (the emotion of) the observer.
The good is primary to the distinction between subject and object, this
observation, which comes from the basis of Pirsig's metaphysics, makes for
the view of ethics entailed by MoQ.
We might consider Pirsigs philosophy a resolution of an ethical paradox, as
coined in Moores naturalistic fallacy:
"If there is no path from what is, to what ought to be, no path from the
true to the good, then where the h... does good come from?"
Regards
Hugo
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