Hi Horse and LS:
Horse, your explanation of holistic vs. relative view reminds of the
following passage from Richard Dawkins' latest book, "Unweaving the
Rainbow:�
"Desmond Morris opens his autobiography, 'Animal Days' in
characteristically arresting vein.
�'Napoleon started it all. If it weren't for him, I might not be sitting here
now writing these words ... for it was one of his cannonballs, fired in the
Peninsular War, that shot off the arm of my great-great-grandfather,
James Morris, and altered the whole course of my family history.�
"Morris tells how his ancestor�s enforced change of career had various
knock-on effects culminating in his own interest in natural history. But he
really needn't have bothered. There's no 'might' about it. Of course he
owes his very existence to Napoleon. So do I and so do you. Napoleon
didn't have to shoot off James Morris's arm in order to seal young
Desmond's fate, and yours and mine, too. Not just Napoleon but the
humblest medieval peasant had only to sneeze in order to affect
something which changed something else which, after a long chain
reaction, led to the consequence that one of your would-be ancestors
failed to be your ancestor and became somebody else's instead. I'm not
talking about chaos theory or the equally trendy complexity theory, but
just about ordinary statistics of causation. The thread of historical events
by which our existence hangs is wincingly tenuous."
Well, there's one version of the "holistic� view, which is why I asked,
�Where do you draw the line?�.
HORSE answered:
"... you have to remain within the limits of what can reasonably be related
to whatever activity you are involved in.�
and
"The best that can be done � is assess the degree to which events
affect each other."
So if I interpret your answer correctly, we end up back in relativism again
where we can argue interminably about whose "reasonable assessment"
of the events affecting the activity in question is the most reasonable
before we can even get to the question of to what degree the activity was
good or evil.
Compare your holistic view to Pirsig�s when he says in Chapter 13 in
�LILA:�
�In general, given a choice of two courses to follow and all other things
being equal, that choice which is more Dynamic, that is, at a higher level
of evolution, is more moral. An example of this is the statement that, 'It's
more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to kill his
patient.' The germ wants to live. The patient wants to live. But the patience
has moral precedence because he's at a higher level of evolution.
"Taken by itself that seems obvious enough. But what�s not so obvious is
that, given a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is absolutely,
scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the patient. This is not just an
arbitrary social convention that should apply to some doctors but not to all
doctors, or to some cultures but not all cultures. It�s true for all people at
all time, now and forever, a moral pattern as real as H20. We're at last
dealing with morals on the basis of reason. We can now deduce codes
based on evolution that analyze moral arguments with greater precision
than before."
The most relevant part of this quotation to our discussion is Pirsig's use
of the absolutist sentence: �It's true for all people, at all time, now and
forever.�
So yes, I agree with you that Pirsig's morality is "holistic" in the sense
that it covers all the bases from atoms to concepts. But his morality also
draws definite lines whereby one can determine good from evil, right
from wrong on a rational, "scientific" basis.
Later in the same chapter, Pirsig makes a rather broad claim:
"It was tempting to take all the moral conflicts of the world and, one by
one, see how they fit this kind of analysis, but Phaedrus realized that if
he started to get into that he would never finish. Wherever he looked,
whatever examples came to mind, he always seemed to be able to lay
them out within this framework, and the nature of the conflicts seemed to
be clearer when he did so."
What appeals to me is that Pirsig narrows his holistic view to a
evolutionary morality "framework," enabling those who agree with the
framework to decide moral issues more reasonably and with greater
possibility for agreement than otherwise.
Should you wish to continue the discussion, my next question to you
would be, �Do you agree that Pirsig�s framework is useful in analyzing
moral questions? If not, is there any framework other than open-ended
holism (context) that you find of value?
Platt
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