[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve, Case

> Case to Platt:
> Pirsig is not offering up a license to make static moral judgments. He
> is providing a way of analyzing ethical matters. 

Agree. But analyzing ethical matters leads to making a moral judgment, 
like it's morally right for the doctor to kill the germ. 

> Steve:
> 
> I agree. Pirsig set out to define moral conflicts in terms of an
> eveolutionary hierarchy, not to give a formula that can be applied to
> solve every moral question.

Agree. But he gave us a new way to determine right from wrong other 
than authority and tradition. That to my mind is his greatest 
contribution to philosophy and to our lives.

> RMP in the intro to LC:
> 
> "After reading through these and many other comments I’ve concluded
> that the biggest improvement I could make in the MOQ would be to block
> the notion that the MOQ claims to be a quick fix for every moral problem
> in the universe. I have never seen it that way. The image in my mind as
> I wrote it was of a large football field that gave meaning to the game
> by telling you who was on the 20-yard line but did not decide which team
> would win. That was the point of the two opposing arguments over the
> death penalty described in Lila.That was the point of the equilibrium
> between static and Dynamic Quality. Both are moral arguments. Both can
> claim the MOQ for support. Just as two sides can go before the U.S.
> Supreme Court and both claim constitutionality, so two sides can use the
> MOQ, but that does not mean that either the Constitution or the MOQ is a
> meaningless set of ideas. Our whole judicial system rests on the
> presumption that more than one set of conclusions about individual cases
> can be drawn within a given set of moral rules. The MOQ makes the same
> presumption."

Point well taken. Nowhere have I claimed, or do I claim now, that the 
MOQ is infallible. But his "rational morality" is a significant  
breakthrough from how the basis of morality has been construed in the 
past.   

Regards,
Platt