Hi Guys,
Long time no speak, etc.
Platt, Struan, Ian, you did a great job putting together the right quotes to hit on
one of the main difficulties of the MoQ again: the intellectual level. I think no one
in this forum
will ever argue that the first three levels are in the right evolutionary order and
that
it's absolutely clear that they are also in the right Moral order. But there has been
al lot
of debate already about the fourth. Not so much about the
evolutionary placing of the Intellectual level above the social, but more about the
Moral
placing as such. Especially if we're talking about the human being, being both a
biological
pattern and a source of intellectual patterns (or must I say, the possibility to the
rise of an
IntPoV, see further).
Struan:
> Pirsig goes on to claim that in the case of a criminal who does not
> threaten the, "established social structure," it is plain that "what makes killing
>him immoral is
> that a criminal is not just a biological organism. He is not just a defective unit
>in society.
> Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too."
I agree with Struan that Pirsig's answer isn't the answer we are searching for. An
imprisonent thought (criminal) in the end is the same as a killed thought. Let's say it
more blunt: If a source of thought is really more moral than a society than it wouldn't
only be immoral for a society to kill a source of thought, but also to limit this
source of thought
by imprisoning it.
I have two thoughts:
1. The intellecual level is more than a collection of thoughts.
We could argue that 'a thought' an idea or a 'source of thoughts' isn't part of the
intellectual level any
more than the pattern 'human being' is part of the social level. Just like the social
level
is a collection of biological patterns and there relationships, it could be that to be
part of the
intellectual level, not only does the pattern be comprised of many thoughts with a
complexity of
relationships, but the pattern also has to be thought by more 'sources of thought'.
What speaks against this is the Brujo in the Zuni society. This is only one person.
His thinking
was dynamic quality at work to change the social level he found himself in. But was
his thinking part
of the intellectual level?
2. From 2D to multidimentional morality thinking
If you read Pirsigs quotes carefully, you'll see that when talking about morality, he
always puts
a perspective in the sentence. It's pretty confusing when one uses more perspectives
in one sentence.
Generaly our thinking is based upon a 2D morality: A thing or an event is good or bad,
or maybe
something in between, but it remains on that line. With the dividing of morality into
the levels we get
a 3D morality: a thing or an event can be moral and immoral (I prefer less moral) at
the same time.
The perspectives used come down to a) the perspective from the SPoV or level and b)
the evolutionary
perspective. (For the lather I also used the word 'universal').
3D gets multidimentional when we consider also the factor time: something can be
immoral now,
but moral over a hundred years. From an evolutionary/universal perspective, the
killing of this
criminal or even the overtrowing of whole states can be moral if these events would
lead to a new
pattern of Value, that lets DQ be realized to the optimal (!) extent.
My point is that talking about the evolutionary perspective of morality, we should
always consider the
factor time, which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to give top-down morality judgements!
What do you think Struan, Ian, Mark, Platt, others?
Dtchgrtngs
Walter
PS Rog I'm still here (thanks for asking).
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