[MD] Is Quality Value?

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Arlo --


> As per "moral relativity", I'd interject that part of Pirsig's formulation
> of the MOQ emphasizes that "moral codes" can be "relative",
> so long as they don't violate the MOQ hierarchy. For example,
> the Samoan sexual mores, he argues, are fine for Samoan culture
> because these patterns of behavior (biological) do not
> threaten fabric of social patterns. Those same sexual mores
> imported to American culture become dangerous (he argues)
> because our cultural-social fabric IS threatened by these behavior
> patterns. In this sense, the sexual morality in question is indeed
> "relative", but that does not mean it not subject to "right and
> wrong" within the larger MOQ context.

Moral codes are relative to the community that establishes them, whether
it's a village, a society, or an international consortium.

> Platt, or Ham, mentioned cannabalism, and I think the MOQ does
> provide an absolute moral standard to object to this by, namely
> that it is by individuals responding to DQ that a society evolves.
> When Pirsig condemns capital punishment, it is by absolute moral
> condemnation. That is, capital punishment can never be "relatively
> moral", as the sexual mores of Samoa, it is always and
> everywhere "immoral".

Among civilized people, there is such a thing as "moral conscience" that
revolts at cannabalism, murder, rape, and other acts of atrocity.  This
is a question of individual human values, as I see it, not a response to an
"absolute" universal principle.  Although I am personally opposed to capital
punishment, it is the law in some countries; so this practice is also
relative to the standards (or conventions) of a particular society.

> For those of us interested in "freedom", this is a critical distinction
> because it allows us to escape from both static morality of
> convention that doesn't violate the MOQ, and gives us a framework
> for challenging the "absolutist" who tells us a moral is "absolute"
> because his/her God says so (for example).
> It also points us towards the other arm of society that suppresses
> intellectual patterns in the name of adhering to a conventional moral
> code or a dictum of God.

I don't see the moral difference between a convention or practice that
"violates the MOQ" and one that violates a "dictum of God".

Regards,
Ham