Hi Matt, On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Matt Kundert <[email protected]> wrote: Steve said: >...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. > > Matt: > Picking up this thought about there being a "basic foundation for > morality" and its compatibility with the MoQ, what's interesting is > how the section on care at the beginning of ZMM intercedes: Pirsig > says there that care is the flipside of Quality. If one accepts for the > moment a prima facie integration of that passage with the MoQ, > then it suggests that perhaps "foundation" is the wrong way to > formulate the relationship, but that Quality and care/empathy are > essentially related in some fashion. And if we take this to be the > case, then like Pirsig's staging of capitalism as the economic > expression of DQ-allowance within a static pattern, then the MoQ > seems to house within itself the near-perfect representation of > modern sentimental liberalism. We don't need to fall down to a > "soup of sentiments," but Pirsig's MoQ would then seem designed to > exactly coincide with liberalism, rather than calling it "just one goal." > The MoQ, in this regard (and I think this might be the right way to > regard it), would be like T. H. Green's metaphysics, or Dewey's, > (maybe Hegel's), and certainly Benedetto's metaphysical philosophy > of history, History as the Story of Liberty. These metaphysics were > _designed_ to be compatible with the basic ideas of liberalism, > because though their creators were professors of philosophy, they > took liberalism to be the most important thing going on in their lives. > > Put that last way, this might not be the case for Pirsig. More was > going on in the 60s as a reaction to stale liberal attitudes, and so > Pirsig's relationship is not simple on this score. But the core seems > to be soundly in the direction. > > As has so often in the past been commented upon, DQ seems > interchangeable at times with Quality. This may cause a few > metaphysical or epistemological conundrums. However, say we take > advantage of that. And say we take Steve's rough definition of > liberalism, which is the politico-moral philosophy of empathy, as > "better taking into account the needs of more and more people." > Perhaps, then, we might reformulate Pirsig's formula for his > philosophy of history from > > "All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward Dynamic > Quality" > to > "All life is a migration toward a better taking into account of the > needs of more and more static patterns." > > I think that grafts pretty well. And notice, like care being the flipside > of Quality, the chiamus between the first and second formula.
Steve: I think that fits very well. I had to look up chiasmus, but I now see what you mean. Both forms seem important to me. The second is what needs more work since Pirsig focused on the outside view in Lila instead of what Quality is like from the inside, i.e. care and how it evolves. I would just point out once again that I think it doesn't give us empathy as a basis for making a prudence morality distinction. Or do you see one in there? While empathy requires caring and can be thought of as a sort of caring in the sense that everything can be thought of as a sort of Quality, I think more needs to be said to explicate empathy as the evolutionary progress of caring. Moral progress as widening the circle of moral concern through seeing the needs of others as also your own needs is not merely caring more. It is not just a deepening of degree of caring but an expansion of the possibility for what can be cared about. dictionary.com says... em·pa·thy [em-puh-thee] Show IPA –noun 1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self. The sociopath doesn't have that sort of moral imagination for whatever reason. The sociopath can put himself in the shoes of another well enough to predict what they will do in different situations, but there is no _identification_ with the other as also yourself. I think that term is central to this issue. (By the way, Bo always pushed the idea of the static levels as corresponding to levels of awareness and an expansion of consciousness.) What I suggested originally to put an MOQ analysis together on the issue (that dmb thinks ought never be done for some reason) is that morality and prudence cashes out in the MOQ with regard to psychopaths is that they are following the social rules for the most part as biological patterns. They mimic the behaviors of social patterns but without identification with social patterns. They participate in social patterns to some extent of course. They must since they clearly have intellectual patterns which rest on social patterns. What doesn't seem to be allowed in the MOQ though is to say that one behavior is morality and another is merely prudence since all behavior (and everything, period) is a matter of morality. Its a matter of which moral code or applying the wrong moral code in a given situation. Often the biological code leads us in the same directions as the social code if only because society has imposed biological consequences for defying the social code. It seems that one can follow the social code by participating in social patterns (identifying with others) or one can follow it to save one's own skin. I think that distinction replaces the prudence-morality distinction in the MOQ. What's important here is selfhood and the expansion of selfhood to include more and more of reality rather than a self limited to a biological organism. That's the sort of moral progress that Rorty talked about as "self-enlargement," as becoming ever more sensitive to the pain of others, at seeing others as part of yourself, and at better meeting the needs of others. Rorty describes moral progress as “a matter of wider and wider sympathy.” We can aim at “taking more people's needs into account than you did previously.” Given the choice between the two articulations of moral progress that you think are compatible, I would say that the more Rortian articulation seems to me to one we are better able to act on. I don't know how much it helps to say that we ought to work to further the migration of static patterns toward dynamic quality. In fact, that isn't what Pirig said we _ought_ to do, it was a statement about what _is_. In contrast, the Rortian view is about imagination and the possibility of what we can become. Rorty, thinks "the present is a transitional stage to something which might, with luck, be unimaginably better" and favors "production of the novel over contemplation of the eternal." A reified perfection is an enemy of this "unimaginable betterness." Rorty explains the importance of imagination: "...we see both intellectual and moral progress not as a matter of getting closer to the True or the Good or the Right, but as an increase in imaginative power. We see imagination as the cutting edge of cultural evolution, the power which--given peace and prosperity--constantly operates so as to make the human future richer than the human past. Imagination is the source of new scientific pictures of the physical universe and of new conceptions of possible communities. It is what Newton and Christ, Freud and Marx, had in common: the ability to redescribe the familiar in unfamiliar terms..." There is nothing about Pirsig that is incompatible with that idea, it's just not what he chose to talk about. Pirsig surely does not suffer from a lack of imagination. In fact, his strength in Rortian terms was his ability to do what these other moral geniuses did in re-describing things in ways that help us be more moral. His work was done in a time when values seemed to have been ruled out irrational. He argued well against that notion in redescribing what is, but further explication is needed in saying what we ought to do in our behavior toward one another and how we can behave better with regard to the needs of others. Best, Steve 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
