[MD] Is Quality Value?

[Hampday, Vales Page editor]

Greetings, Arlo and Platt --

This dialogue has taken quite a different turn than I anticipated when
starting it.  I guess it wasn't enough to establish that Quality and Value
both mean the same to Pirsigians.  The topic you two are now debating is a
rehash of  "Is Morality Relative?", another thread that I initiated with
reference to Stephen Edington's sermon a year ago last December!   (More
proof that these issues just keep going round and round and never get
resolved.)

[Arlo]:
> 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.
> [snip]
> Thus, the only "absolute" test in the MOQ is whether or not lower patterns
of
> value threaten or suppress higher patterns of value.

Let me ask you a couple of dialectical questions.  If by "absolute test" you
mean to imply that MOQ morality is Absolute, why is Darwinian evolution a
trial-and-error process whose outcome is largely dependent on the
vicissitudes of Nature?   It seems palpably clear to me that existence -- 
including human behavior -- is a relativistic system.  If there is an
Absolute Morality for man, how would you define it as a cultural standard?

 [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.

Now, you've introduced Absolute Immorality.  Could you also define that
concept in terms of man's behavior?

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

In ancient Sparta, the practice of leaving a child to die of exposure on a
hillside was not considered murder if the child was judged to be unsuitable
for some reason.  In his Republic, Plato laid it down as a matter of eugenic
policy that parents should bear children for the state for a defined period
of years.  After that period sexual intercourse would be permitted, but the
couple involved would dispose of the newborn child if the former course
proved impossible.  The Middle Assyrian Laws read: "If a woman has had a
miscarriage by her own act, when they have presented her (and) convicted
her, they shall impale her on stakes without burying her. If she died in
having the miscarriage, they shall impale her on stakes without burying her.
[Meek, The Middle Assyrian Laws; as cited by Rogerson 1985].

Would you regard these practices as moral on the ground that they eliminate
"a threat to society"?

 [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.

Doesn't the application of reason in this context suggest deciding on an
"intellectually reasonable" compromise viz a viz relational factors?  Pirsig
seems to feel that Quality or Value is not discerned intellectually, but is
directly experienced.   Why should reason be necessary if morality is
absolute?

[Arlo]:
> Indeed, it is immoral for society to suppress
> biological patterns of value that do not constitute a threat to society.

Can you give me an example of a "biological pattern of value"?  Would
natural evolution of the species be such a pattern?

Morality is a sticky wicket, gentlemen.  I think we would need more than the
wisdom of Solomon to define it in absolute terms, whether we're talking
about man's behavior or the patterns of the cosmos.

Merry Christmas to you both,
Ham