Continuing my digest of Jan 9, I'd like to comment on the last paragraphs of
Platt's digest ( Jan 5 )
From Pirsig: :
"From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world is a
completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything.
Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like
machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally
wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide.
There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just functions.
"Now that intellect was in command of society for the first time in
history, was this the intellectual pattern it was going to run society
with?" (Lila, 22)
From Platt:
The problem with Western culture is "Nothing is right and nothing is
wrong." You see it most prominently in the philosophy dominating the
academic elite -- relativism and its sister, multiculturism.
=======
My comments:
"From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world is a
completely purposeless, valueless place" I addressed the question of
purposeless in my last; regarding the question of the world as a valueless
place:
This is a pretty difficult issue to tackle in just a few sentences; one
runs the risk of being superficial. However, to propose that, for Science, the
world is a valueless place, without substantiating the assertion may also be
considered somewhat superficial, so, I'll give it a try.
In the eyes of Science a description of the world we live-in should
be coherent and consistent or, in short, 'should make sense'. To think that
the world ought to be like that, is to think in terms of values.
Perhaps some examples to illustrate: processes that happen inside the
atomic nucleus or in a remote star or inside a living cell, cannot be described
by using a different Physics in each case. You cannot use a different quantum
theory or a different thermodynamics for clusters of proteins than for clusters
of stars. If a theory in Chemistry contradicts a theory in Biology, it means
that something is amiss in one of them and the contradiction should be urgently
clarified. Considering the incredible variety of forms and processes in our
world, to presume that the world ought to behave in such a way is to ask a lot
from it and, to presume that, we humans, will eventually achieve that purpose
is to ask a lot from ourselves.
I'd venture to say that those are value-loaded worldviews and hence to
accuse Science of considering the world as a valueless place seems to me a bit
unfair.
True, Science has little or nothing to offer regarding values such as
Liberty, Equality, Beauty and others that preoccupy us so much as humans in
societies. However, because of its way of thinking the world, Science could be
of help in contrasting values with actual practices. Something is surely amiss
if we happen to believe in Liberty for some and not for others and the notion
of universality of human rights is in a way in line with the scientific idea of
how the world ought to be.
"There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally
wrong with lying, with theft,
." Again, I'd be so bold as to rephrase that.
Science does not say that there is nothing morally wrong with lying or
stealing, neither it says that those actions are morally wrong. Morality, taken
in that sense, it's just out of bounds of its fields of enquiry. The same to
be said for Art and even for History. These are questions in the domain of
Philosophy and Religion. Perhaps one day all of it may merge into one, I do
hope so; in the meantime let's worry about how each one does its self-assigned
job and if I may add, as a debatable proposition, Western culture has been
doing much better in Art or Science than in Philosophy or Religion.
As to your last sentence: The problem with Western culture is "Nothing is
right and nothing is wrong", I tend to disagree with you. The disagreement may
arise though from different meanings of "Western culture" . If we think of
culture in terms of patterns of thinking of the Western intellectual elites I'd
agree with you; postmodernism and all that stuff. But if we think of culture in
terms of the masses of people, I'd say that the issues of right and wrong
preoccupy as much as in previous periods in our history. Confrontations like
the WWII and the Cold War, which involved humanity at large, used a rhetoric of
right and wrong in the moral sense. In our very days from hearing the most
influential leader of the West (GWB) moral issues seem to be most preeminent.
Since he and others are addressing public opinion, it could be inferred that
those issues still carry a lot of weight among the public.
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