[MD] Is Quality Value?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
I don't know where you got those ideas from. Not from Lila.

[Arlo]
Absolutely from Lila. The Samoan story showed how biological patterns of
behavior (sexual morality) worked in Samoan culture without threatening their
social patterns. This demonstrates that there is not an "absolute moral code of
sexual behavior" that transcends culture*. The problem is that although the
sexual morality is "relative" between American and Samoan culture, does not
mean that it is transplantable.

*- if there is, it is that biological patterns of value are (or should be)
acceptable so long as they do not threaten to dominate or destroy social
patterns of behavior (the same is true for social patterns of value). 

Thus, the only "absolute" test in the MOQ is whether or not lower patterns of
value threaten or suppress higher patterns of value. The Samoan sexual
practices (their biological patterns of value) were moral within Samoan culture
because they pass this MOQ test. Those same patterns of value within our
culture (Pirsig argued) were immoral for the reason that they threatened social
patterns of value.

[Platt]
Thus, according to SOM intellect, anything goes, completely ignoring the role of
social patterns in keeping biological forces under control. I don't know where
you got this "moral relativity is OK" business from.

[Arlo]
Show me where, in Lila, Pirsig indicates that a particular behavior is
absolutely immoral except for in context where a lower level threatens to
destroy a higher level.

[Platt]
Capital punishment is never condemned absolutely in the MOQ. If the 
accused represents a threat to society, it is OK to execute her.

[Arlo]
Pirsig says, "When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of
individual criminals, the issue becomes more complex. In the case of treason or
insurrection or war a criminal's threat to a society can be very real. But if
an established social structure is not seriously threatened by a criminal, then
an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral justification for
killing him."

You'd be hard pressed to come up with an explanation for how a prisoner in a
secure facility for life could constitute a "threat" to the existence of a
society. Take the recent execution in California. Did you support it? Do you
feel his existence in that prison constituted a "serious threat" to the
"established social structure"? If he would not have been put to death, would
American society have been destroyed?

[Platt] 
The MOQ provides a framework whereby moral questions can be resolved on 
the basis of reason. That's its claim to fame. "Relative" social morals 
don't enter the picture.

[Arlo]
Yes, they do. According to the MOQ, patterns of value on any given level of the
MOQ are not immoral until they threaten the existence of higher levels. The
framework the MOQ gives us is one to see if behavior, or patterns of value on
any level, violate this or not. If not, the pattern of value in question is not
open to societal suppression. Indeed, it is immoral for society to suppress
biological patterns of value that do not constitute a threat to society.

Arlo