Ham writes: This is another example of a syllogism with an undistributed middle. But, irrespective of the false logic, "moral judgments" are made by conscious individuals, not by the world. It is man's intellect that impugns morality to the universe and "asserts" that this is value. Electrons and moons are not held to their orbits by "preference" or "value" but by electro-mechanical or gravitational attraction. Heat doesn't dissipate because "it likes to." This kind of thinking is neither philosophical nor scientific; it's childish animism based on a naive interpretation of physical behavior.
- "The 'Laws of Nature' are moral laws." (Free Will?) - "Chemistry professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect forces of the cosmos force them to do so." (Determinism?) - "We can just as easily deduce the morality of atoms from the observation that chemistry professors are, in general, moral." (Then comes the syllogism to "prove" it.) With all due respect to the author, this is nonsense. With all due respect to you Ham, you've missed the author's point. Just before you start your quote (which is selective because you want to prove your point) comes the word 'unnecessary' (which you do not include)[Lila p161]. He uses this word to qualify the inevitability of determinism. Some professors smoke pipes and go to movies because they like to do so...there is no deterministic compulsion involved at all. Secondly, may I put forward that "hydrogen and oxygen form water because it is moral to do so (Lila p160) is: no 1 because of preference and 2 because this preference is the best possible preference available given the nature of the inorganic patterns of value at the time and still is. Just look at what this preference has made possible!!! It has survived and not only that: It is one of the most important moral choices in all of evolutionary history! It has been a huge success, it deserves celebrity status but it knows full well that there is something vulgar in that. That's why it doesn't bother.It is just being itself...a super high quality pattern of value. More moral than the pope, more politically pure than Lincoln, more socialist than Marx more idealist than Hegel. I would say Halleluja to water ..thanks to both elements it responded to DQ at the same time, the same place and the same circumstance. Just a thought Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
