Steve said to all MOQers:
It is clear that Harris's project in his latest book is the same as Pirsig's in
Lila--to demonstrate that morality is open to rational inquiry and that is it
possible to know truths about morality in the sense that we say we know truths
about science.
dmb says:
I think that's true enough. Pirsig attacks scientific objectivity and SOM
precisely because, as Harris puts it, that view is what leads us to "think that
there’s just no such thing as moral truth" and "there’s nothing about our
intuitions of right and wrong and good and evil that actually connects to
reality in any scientific sense". I think Pirsig would totally agree that this
situation constitutes "an intellectual emergency". Based on the way Harris
describes this intellectual emergency, I think it's fair to say the problem has
a name. Sam says he consistently encounters "people in academic settings and
scientists and journalists who feel that you can’t say that anyone is wrong in
any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life".
That's what he thinks is "really quite dangerous" and "on its face ridiculous".
It's this relativism that creates a moral vacuum, into which slip the most
reactionary and vacuous of moralities. It's as if anyone with any sense at all
has been paralyzed or hogtied.
It seems to me that Pirsig's solution to this intellectual emergency would be
of interest to Sam Harris, to say the least. Would you be interested in
drafting a letter to Sam explaining how the MOQ might serve his project? Maybe
we could all do it together, as a group project. Who knows, maybe it would
actually make a positive difference. Maybe it'll actually introduce some
quality into the public debate about morality. Pun intended.
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