[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Craig]
When I was in college most places would have a proctor monitor exams.  Where I
went there was an "Honor Code"--no proctors. I followed the Honor Code, not out
of any duty to others but because that was the kind of person I wanted to be. 
This seems nearer to the ideal of arete.

[Arlo]
Hi Craig. Pirsig paired arete with virture, "duty to self". In this vein, what
you mention above seems more like an example of virtue than honor (to me),
maybe its just linguistic habituation that prevents us from calling it a
"Virtue Code". 

Honor and virtue, let me remind me you, in my opinion are not antonymic poles,
but internal and external manifestations of "duty", and as such are not wholly
opposite, but contain each other in many ways.

For example, in your example above I'd say "honor" plays a part when one's "duty
to an external" (in this case "truthfulness") comes at a self-sacrifice. That
is, given the choice, you've taken a harder route for yourself in order to
serve duty to the external concept of truthfulness. In this way, people can
perform acts of honor is serving duty to a deity. Although, I'd caution,
through the deity is also a belief that one's action effect the greater good
(Joan of Arc, for example, acted with honor in service of her deity (external),
but through this performed acts that sacrificed herself to serve others).

So. In your example I'd say you were more "virtuous" than "honorable", but if
there was an honor component, I'd say it comes precisely from the fact that you
sacrificed something of yourself out of duty to something else.

All I'm arguing here, so as not to lose sight of the origin, is that acting
"honorably" is not simply "being honest". When your covivant asks you "how do I
look in this?", telling her/him s/he looks fat will not often bring you cheers
of honor. Or, to take the latest partisan isssue du jour, the NYT certainly
displayed "honesty" in their recent reporting of covert surveillences (no one
ever claimed they "lied"), but how many Bushites do you think would claim what
they did was "honorable"? Now, the lefties, THEY certainly think it was
"honorable", but why? Precisely becuse in their minds the NYT took a risk to
self to perform a duty to others. Neither side disputes the "honesty" of the
NYT in what they've reported, but one side sees it as "honorable" and the other
as "deplorable". Why? Because both see "duty to others" differently.