Hi dmb,
> Steve said: > 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. > > > > dmb objected to Steve's claim: > By that reasoning, there can be no such thing as immorality in the MOQ. Does > this not strike you as an absurd conclusion? It's like saying everything is > Quality so there is nothing bad and all things are excellent. It's just silly. > > > > Steve replied: > That is not it at all. As Horse explained, in the MOQ _all_ judgments in the > MOQ are moral judgments. Some could be good or bad, moral or immoral, prudent > or imprudent, etc, but they can't be called prudent or imprudent _in > contrast_ with moral or immoral because prudence like everything else in the > MOQ is a moral consideration. .... > > > dmb says: > > You are talking in circles, Mr. Peterson. You have just said that "all > judgements in the MOQ are moral judgements" AND "Some [of those moral > judgements] could be ...immoral. There is no way to rightly say that some > moral judgement are immoral. It's like saying some good things are bad. It > simply defies the meaning of the words by 180 degrees. It's just plain > confusing and wrong. Steve: You are having some serious difficulty with the English language, but I am wielding these terms in the same way that Pirsig did in the quote Pirsig provided... In Lila Pirsig states: "The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral judgements are essentially assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world. It says that even at the most fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of value and moral judgement are identical. The “Laws of Nature” are moral laws." Obviously when Pirsig says "static patterns of value and moral judgement are identical" he is not asserting that no static patterns can ever be immoral. Of course you can say that some moral judgments are immoral. The study of ethics includes talking about what is ethical and what is unethical. Talking about morality includes specifying what is wrong as well as what is right. making "moral judgments" includes saying things are immoral. > Steve continued: > ...There is no way to say that an act was merely based on prudence _rather > than_ morality when everything is based on morality in the MOQ. A moral act > could be prudent or imprudent just as could an immoral act, but prudence is > not something that can be put in opposition to morality in the MOQ as was > done in Kantian ethics. > > dmb says: > > You've committed the same blatant contradiction here too. A moral act could > be ..an immoral act? That's like saying a true idea could be untrue. It's > pure nonsense. Steve: Not at all, it is like saying that a human being is a moral animal. When people say that, they do not mean that humans are good. They aren't paying human beings a compliment. They are saying that they are capable of doing right as well as doing wrong. The category "morality" includes both. dmb: Don't you just mean that every act has a moral dimension, that every act is moral or immoral to some degree? If we assume this disagreement is just a result of saying that unclearly, then I still don't see why we should conclude that the MOQ can't oppose morality and prudence. Why does the distinction between empathetically motived acts and acts motivated by the desire to save one's skin? You still seem to be saying that the MOQ erases all sorts of moral distinctions, even the ones that separate the Ghandis from the Bundys. I think that's absurd and even a little bit horrifying. Steve: Of course when I say that all judgments are moral judgments I mean that "every act has a moral dimension." I am not complimenting people's judgments. I am not saying that all judgments are good. I am putting them in the category of moral consideration. But the MOQ goes further to say that there is no other sort of consideration. There is no dimension beside the moral dimension. In the usual prudence-morality distinction, we can conceive of two dimensions which could be put on two orthogonal axes with possibilities for acts to be moral and prudent, moral and imprudent, immoral and prudent, and immoral and imprudent. In the moral-prudent quadrant, the criticism of a given act may be that while it is moral it was committed not for the sake of it being moral but for the sake of it being prudent. The MOQ does not allow for that sort of criticism (at least in the same way) since, again, we do not have a moral dimension as distinct from some other dimensions. To get back to the topic of psychopathy, we won't be able to make this prudence-morality distinction part of our psychological analysis to say what is moral or immoral about the psychopath at least without doing a lot of 'splainin'. Though that is how psychopathy is usually talked about, that sort of explanation won't fly in the MOQ. Regards, 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
