Steve: What spiritual matters are you talking about? Harris embraces a "new spiritual rationality" that recognizes that science presupposes values and can apply its reason to study values. This is Pirsig's dream but apparently your nightmare.
Mark: Steve, spirituality is not rational. Rationality has no place in it. You have got no idea what you are talking about. ...I do not believe this was Pirsig's dream. I think you are being misled. Steve: I didn't just pull the term "new spiritual rationality" out of my ass, Mark. This is indeed Pirsig's dream ZAMM: "The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is...emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be at for a long time to come." ZAMM: "He felt that the solution started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that...a new spiritual rationality...in which the ugliness and the loneliness and the spiritual blankness of dualistic technological reason would become illogical. Reason was no longer to be "value free." Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality, and he was sure he would find the cause of its not being so back among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had endowed our culture with the tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what is "reasonable" even when it isn’t any good. That was the root of the whole thing. Right there. I said a long time ago that he was in pursuit of the ghost of reason. This is what I meant. Reason and Quality had become separated and in conflict with each other and Quality had been forced under and reason made supreme somewhere back then." Steve: The solution Pirsig proposed was a "root expansion of reason" so that it can deal with values. It starts with recognizing that reason itself is subordinate to Quality, that reason is not independent of values, it presupposes values. Therefore, there is nothing unreasonable about values talk. Mark: Let me say, that I follow no-one. My conscious experience dictates all. I derive things empirically through experience. I am not one of those theists that believes everything the physics textbooks tells me, nor am I an agnostic waiting to really see the electron before I believe in it, nor am I an atheist that needs to deny some phantom, that I have created, in order to justify my behavior. So you may be right if a discussion on morality means creating a moral system scientifically and then forcing it on people, we have nothing to discuss. The whole concept of defining morality in such a way smacks of a highly dogmatic Religion which will be forcing us wear burkas because it has been scientifically proven to be highly moral. Such an encapsulation of morals is not only dangerous, it is immoral. Steve: Where are you getting this bit about "creating a moral system scientifically and then forcing it on people"? Science tells us that it is good for you to exercise everyday. Is anyone forcing you to do so? But nevertheless, isn't it good to know what is and is not good for you even if no one forces you to do it? Or is it better to remain ignorant of certain truths? 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/md/archives.html
