[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

You said in defense of honor as an intellectual value:

Honor is about truth and honesty. It's intellectual, as
Pirsig makes clear:

"Truth is an intellectual pattern of values. Is science 
unconcerned? A scientist may argue rationally that the
moral question, "Is it all right to murder your
neighbor?" is not a scientific question. But can he argue
that the moral question,
"Is it all right to fake your scientific data?" is not a 
scientific question? Can he say, as a scientist, "The 
faking of scientific data is no concern of science?"

Like I said, honor, honesty, truth come from a deep 
intellectual understanding of how the world works at its 
best. You can't cheat or fool Mother Nature. 



Steve:
I haven't seen anything to convince me that honor and truth
are synonyms--probably because they aren't--but let's look
at honesty since that value is of issue in the above quote.

Honesty is actually a social rather than intellectual value
as are pretty much all the value you cite to define SOLWAQI's
individual level.

Honest is something we say about a person whereas truth is
something we say about an assertion. In Platt's SOLWAQI the
individual is not distinguished from the ideas he holds so
there is no difference between truth and honesty, but the
MOQ makes a clear distinction between the two.

That distinction is consistent with the distinction that
Pirsig makes here:

"A person who holds an
idea is a social entity, no matter what ideas he
holds. The ideas he holds are an intellectual entity,
no matter who holds them." Lila's Child

Regards,
Steve



 		
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.