[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Case]

[Platt]
Pirsig does NOT include ants, bees and chimps in the social level 
(society). "One can also call ants and bees "social" insects, but for 
purposes of precision in the MOQ social patterns should be defined as 
human and subjective.  Unlike cells and bees and ants they cannot be 
detected with an objective scientific instrument.  For example there is 
no objective scientific instrument that can distinguish between a king 
and commoner, because the difference is  social."

[Case]
Socials hierarchies are present throughout nature. In some there are
physical differences between caste members in some there aren't. In most
primate societies the leaders are hard to pick out. Dress codes among humans
make actually make it easier to single out the leaders from the followers.
It would be far easier to locate the Pope in a stadium of people that to
pick out the alpha male in the ape habitat at the Atlanta zoo.
To set up "society" as a metaphysical level then refuse to consider the
thousand of types of social organizations that exist in nature has always
seemed odd to me. Human society has clear and obvious precursors among other
members of the primate family. 

> [Case]
> Having respect for life does not make one a Jain.
[Platt]
What's a "Jain?'
[Case]
A Hindu sect who wear masks on their faces to avoid accidentally swallowing
bugs. They only eat food that has died of natural causes.

> [Platt]
> > P.S. I suspect you consider your ideas better than mine. :-)
> 
> [Case]
> I am evolving an increasing probabalistic view of almost everything. So
> it is fair to say that I believe my ideas have a higher probability of
> being correct. I think what Pirsig says about ideas having quality this
> is what he mean. We should not speak in terms of rightness and wrongness
> but terms of likehood and utility.

[Platt]
You mean we "probably" should not speak in terms of rightness and 
wrongness.:-)  Instead I think we definitely should think in terms of 
rightness and wrongness, like as Pirsig says: "But what's not so 
obvious is that, given a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is 
absolutely, scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the 
patient.This is not just an arbitrary social convention that should 
apply to some doctors but not to all doctors, or to some cultures but 
not all cultures. It's true for all people at all times, now and 
forever, a moral pattern of reality as real as H20."

[Case]
So when it is patient vs. germ the probability is near 100% that the doctor
will prefer the patient. What if the germ inside the patient could hold the
key to creating an antibody that would cure cancer? The values change as do
the probable response of the doctor. Or to take a less fanciful example what
if the birth of a child threatens the life of a mother? To say that ethical
issues are real is one thing to say how they will be resolved is another. 

H20 is real as any ethical dilemma but take a single drop of it. If it is
laying on the ground its future is pretty static. There is a high
probability that it will just evaporate into the air from whence it came.
But if it condenses in the atmosphere its future is far more dynamic 
(uncertain).