dmb said:
... Sociopaths and psychopaths are both forms of anti-social personality
disorder but the latter is more severe. I'd point out that normally the
capacity to feel empathy begins at a very early age. Even infants can do it and
researchers like Franz DeWall have found that primates and even rats have this
capacity. Empathy is the basic foundation of morality and of the family
structure even in the animal world. A person who's incapable of empathy is
seriously damaged, is missing something very basic. Morality is about how we
relate to each other. It's about "we", as opposed to me or it. Without empathy
"we" means nothing.
Steve commented:
What people usually mean by the word "morality" includes the capacity to
empathize, but in the MOQ, morality goes all the way down. Rocks and trees and
atoms are moral beings. Rather than empathy being "the basic foundation for
morality," in the MOQ morality is the basic foundation for everything (which
includes empathy). It seems that you've made an argument _against_ the MOQ as
the best way to think about morality.
dmb says:
Seems like you're bending over backwards to find something wrong with empathy,
which is kinda funny given the meaning of term "empathy". Anyway, since the
point was made in terms of what various kinds of mammals can do, in terms of
what's basic to what "we" do our branch of the evolutionary tree, and in terms
that specifically excluded "it", then a reasonable person should conclude that
I'm talking about human morality, and not about rocks or atoms. In effect,
you're criticizing my comments for being limited to the actual topic, namely
empathy, the thing that sociopathic personalities do not have.
Steve continued:
Nevertheless, empathy is what I want people to think of with regard to moral
talk rather than divine command or Natural Law. If you think it has an
important place in the MOQ (if there actually is no contradiction with the MOQ
in what you said above), it seems to me this is an area that needs some work
since it is not something that I recall Pirsig writing about and since it does
not divide neatly into the MOQ levels to talk about moral progress as expansion
of the capacity to empathize with wider and wider circles of concern. In the
modern liberal conception, morality is about better taking into account the
needs of more and more people. In the MOQ as I understand it, that is not what
morality _is_ it is just one goal that certain people have that either does or
does not contribute to evolution of static patterns toward dynamic quality.
dmb says:
Yea, let's get rid of all those advocates of natural law and divine command.
They're drowning out the MOQ and they have to be stopped.
But seriously, empathy has tremendous evolutionary advantages and the MOQ is
not opposed to scientific facts such as those produced by primatologists like
Frans DeWall. I mean, we can look at such findings from an MOQ perspective even
if Pirsig did not comment on them specifically. That's just par for the course,
isn't it? That's what thinking is for, no?
Care is the essential ingredient and it isn't reaching at all to say that
empathy is the sort of care we extend to each other. The motorcycle repairman
has to care in relation to the bike. The freshman writing her essay has to care
about quality in that context. This is JUST as true when it comes to dealing
with people, if not MORE so. In Lila he says of his character, that the only
moral thing he did on the whole trip was to say something positive about Lila
to Rigel. "Yea, she has quality," he said. And it doesn't take much reading
between the lines to see that he can truly empathize with her insanity, he
defends her right to be insane for a while and tells us that the best thing to
do would just let her go through it in peace, someplace quite.
I can't even imagine how the MOQ's moral vision could be incompatible with
human empathy. It may be awkward to push the concept all the way down to atoms
but it's so basic that even rats exhibit some empathy and a distaste for
cruelty. Chimps are very sophisticated about it and small children are already
experts. It is easy to justify intellectually and all the great spiritual
leaders have held it as centrally important. It reaches across and transcends
the levels. Do unto others. It's the golden rule wherever you go. Can you think
of any GOOD reason why the MOQ would be inconsistent with that? I can't.
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
