**************
ROGER CONCURS THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT
BETWEEN MOORE, AYER AND PIRSIG IS IN THEIR BASE
METAPHYSICAL ASSUMPTIONS, BUT HE SUSPECTS THAT WE
MAY HAVE AN EMOTIVE ASSUMPTION IN OUR MIDST.
HE OFFERS ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THIS CHARGE AND
CLARIFIES CONCERNS WITH THE MOQ'S MORAL HIERARARCHY.
****************
If I am going to start posting once a year, I had better make each one count!
Here is a long one. Sorry in advance, but I am intending this as my summary
and thoughts toward all the great posts by everyone on this months great
topic. Please let me know where you agree and disagree!
1) ON G.E. MOORE AND THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY --
In his essay "The Indefinability of Good," Moore says just what the title
suggests. He offers that good is like 'yellow'; it cannot be defined in
terms separate from itself. You must experience good and yellow to know what
they are. If you define something as having the property of yellow, it does
not make the thing synonymous with yellow. When we say squashes are yellow,
we mean they have that property, not that squash and yellow are the same.
According to Moore, the same is true when we say 'pleasure is good.'
The MOQ has no fundamental battle with Moore. In the MOQ, pure experience =
reality = morality. And the primary empirical reality is undefinable. There
are some fundamental metaphysical differences in assumptions between Pirsig
and Ayer, but these are somewhat tangential to the basic concern. The
naturalist fallacy is no challenge whatsoever to the MOQ.
2) ON AJ AYER AND ETHICS BEING EMOTIVE --
In his "Critique of Ethics", Ayer explains that ethical concepts are emotive.
They express feelings about things, not assertions. Moral judgements are
not objective, and cannot be true or false. Per Ayer, moral arguments are
only possible if we pre-suppose a system of values. When we say 'stealing is
wrong,' we are only sharing our subjective feelings.
The MOQ also has, at least on the surface, very little argument with Ayer,
though we differ substantially in the foundations of our philosophy. The
ethics that Ayer dismisses are social patterns. The MOQ clearly acknowledges
that social morals are not objective. They are not measured based on truth or
falsity, they are measured based on their contributions to the evolutionary
advance of society. It is intellectual patterns which are measured by their
objectivity (but in the MOQ this term means empirically repeatable), their
truth and their consistency. Within the MOQ, social ethics does indeed
presuppose a moral system -- namely the society in question.
The MOQ doesn't differ with Ayer substantially on the above point. Where it
does disagree is with Ayer's assertion that emotive statements are not
empirical. In the MOQ, feelings and emotions and societies are just as
empirical as facts. I agree completely with Diana's recent comments on the
issue. To cut'n'paste from her 'Giraffe' post:
"Emotions are considered subjective, therefore
they cannot tell us anything objectively true about reality. But the MOQ
does not accept that subject-object divide as primary therefore the
dismissal of emotions has no basis.......
Emotivism is morality based on whatever feels
good to you. The MOQ is morality with ultimate reference to Dynamic Quality,
which is what's good."
In summary, Ayer's dismissal of ethics only applies in a subject/object
metaphysics. So far so good....right?
3) THE EMOTIVE PROBLEM --
The challenge we face on the emotive issue isn't that morality is dismissed,
it is that we might be guilty of emotive assumptions in our system. The MOQ
is a metaphysics -- an intellectual pattern. As such, statements of feelings
are not sufficient. To base a metaphysics on emotive arguments would be
intellectually unsound.
The area where I am concerned the MOQ may be guilty of emotivism arises with
Pirsig's statement that DQ is superior to sq -- that dynamic freedom is
better than static patterns. What support does Pirsig give for this
assumption? I can find none. Can anyone else? Is this not an emotive
statement? It would be one thing if he only stated that reality can be
divided into DQ and sq. Or if he only pointed out that the course of
evolution has indeed been toward dynamic advance. But he doesn't stop there.
He states that "In general, given a choice between 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."
PLOP! There it is! The emotive assumption of the MOQ.
Or is it?????
4) THE LOGICAL SOLUTION?
The only possible logical loophole that I can think of to dispel the charge
of emotivism on this issue is if we establish that DQ and morality and
reality are just three different terms for the same thing. (note I did this
at the beginning of this post.) If DQ = reality = morality, then it would be
correct to state that more DQ is more moral. The range of potential
experience IS the range of morality. Do note that if we substitute Quality
for DQ we get Quality = reality = morality. This does not lead to the
conclusion that dynamic is better than static.
Does Pirsig ever explicitly state this argument? Does he offer any other
justification for his 'Dynamic is better' assertion?
Is my argument sound? What problems do you see with it?
The primary objection I anticipate on the above solution is that it seems to
leave out sq. However, Pirsig is careful to delineate throughout Lila that
it is DQ which is the "cutting edge of reality." He stresses that sq is
'derived from primary experience' and that it "emerges in the wake of DQ"
and that it is not primary. Although he refers to Dynamic and static as "the
basic division of reality," it does not necessarily follow that the division
is mutually exclusive. DQ and sq are not like two sides of some objective,
materialist coin, where everything is either A OR NOT A. The division is
between primary experience and 'patterns of experience'. This distinction
is not one of subtraction, but of addition. William James' explains this
distinction in detail in his writings on radical empiricism. For an
oversimplified analogy, think of the division between DQ and sq not as a
sorting between oil paints and watercolors, but as one of paints (DQ) to
paintings(sq).
I suspect that some members will disagree with me on the nature of the
division though. Some may feel I have answered the emotive problem only at
the expense of creating a new problem with their concept of the
static/Dynamic split. Feedback is welcome.
5) CAN WE "NOW DEDUCE CODES BASED ON
EVOLUTION THAT ANALYZE MORAL ARGUMENTS
WITH GREATER PRECISION THAN EVER BEFORE"?
Pirsig throws out a pretty bold statement in Chapter 13 as quoted above. The
MOQ recognizes that the higher levels are more evolved and more dynamic than
the lower, and therefore, more moral. Knowledge of the levels can therefore
help sort out moral issues. However, the MOQ faces quite a few challenges as
an effective moral guide. These are:
i) Pirsig doesn't define the levels very well. Exactly what separates
biology from society from intellect? Personally, I think even Pirsig is
confused here. He seems to throw in advanced social patterns with
intellectual patterns (democracy and freedom of the press are two examples
that I am convinced are social).
ii) Things and actions aren't necessarily isolated to one level. For example
a man is a collection of patterns from all four levels. The MOQ has no
provisions to sort out degrees of 'levelness'? Struan was always good at
pointing out these types of problems. The classic mistake is where Pirsig
reminds us of a death row convict's intellectual value while forgetting this
value in hundreds of thousands of people that died in the American Civil War.
iii) The MOQ is not designed for same level conflicts. This is not some
minor quibble, this is a major blow to the moral effectiveness of the MOQ as
a moral guide. The tough moral issues aren't between societies and germs,
they are between two people or two societies. To his credit, Pirsig
recognized this limitation and spelled it out (for us to ignore) "...when you
try to say specifically what is and what isn't evolution, and where evolution
is going, you find you are right back in the soup again. The problem is that
you can't really say whether a specific change is evolutionary at the time it
occurs." In other words, basing a morality on DQ is a lot more useful in
looking backward than forward. It is more a tool for analysis than immediate
behavior. Pirsig highlights this in the final chapter where he comments that
his one moral act (saying Lila had quality) was not deliberative and
intellectual, but spontaneous and creative.
iv) Where he does try to solve same level conflicts he uses a scale of
'dynamicness' or evolutionary advance. However, he never defines this scale.
For example, Pirsig suggests that a cow is more evolved than a vegetable.
This sounds obvious, but it conflicts with any evolutionary theory I am aware
of. The truth is, according to current evolutionary concepts, every thing
alive today, from a bacterium to a carrott to a leopard is considered equally
evolved. If Pirsig feels current evolutionary models are inadequate on this
point (they might be), he needs to propose a specific, falsifiable
alternative definition. BTW, there are numerous theories that attempt to
measure social evolution, complexity and 'dynamicness.' These could be
evaluated for their value to the MOQ.
v) What about matters of degree and size and number? Are higher level
patterns always morally superior? Are a million cows more moral than one
good idea? Than one BAD idea? Is a species or a rainforest less moral than a
logging company? The MOQ doesn't have any provisions for the extent of
pattern that can be created or destroyed.
vi) The final concern is that Pirsig fails to adequately explain the process
of how the higher levels emerge from and transcend the lower. His
explanations are extremely sketchy. This is a minor issue, but I think
additional clarity here could provide benefits to the use of the MOQ as a
moral guide. If the jumps between levels are so clear and important at
distinguishing the dynamic potential of patterns, shouldn't we study what is
involved in the process?
6) IN CONCLUSION
Pirsig mentioned to us a while back that the MOQ is only 2% complete. I
suggest that it is up to us to start working on filling in all the missing
pieces. The above critique sounds harsh, but I think the MOQ is the basic
metaphysical foundation which we can and should build upon.
The critical issues that must be addressed include:
A. Logically explaining why the Dynamic is more moral than the static. We
cannot leave this hanging. I have given one suggestion to the issue, and
there are probably others. (For example, we could grade morality, ala Ken
Wilbur, based upon the degree of pattern as a whole and as a part. The
problem here is that this is not just adding to the MOQ, it is CHANGING it.
However, it solves LOTS of the above problems! Don't worry, I am just
brainstorming)
B. Clarifying the levels and the level-emergence process.
C. Building a measurement system to compare the relative 'dynamicness' of
same-level patterns.
D. Building something in the MOQ's moral model to recognize the amount of
pattern. (again reading Wilbur can be beneficial)
E. Clarifying that the MOQ is more of a morality map than an itinerary. The
MOQ is not an algorithm for moral behavior or a process to rationalize or
condemn past behavior. It a metaphysical map that allows you to step back
and analyze reality/morality with a superior set of coordinates. Nothing is
more damaging to the MOQ than improper expectations. The message of the MOQ
is, in the end, to follow undefined quality. Don't just follow the current
roads, use your map to build a new path -- to change the very terrain you
are trying to chart.
But then again, I could be wrong.....
Roger Parker
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
