[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[ian glendinning]

Ben, (Arlo & Platt)

Good job on breaking out of the point by point argument, which as you
say rarely leads anywhere.

I think your analysis is interesting ("thinking but still doing"
aspect is a good thought) but flawed only on the premise that Arlo's
"invariably leads to" clause was a logical statement to start with. In
fact it was one of many in a debate. I think Arlo was referring to the
common historical circumstance in the kind of example being dredged
up. Necessary but not sufficient maybe.

I think the important point you made is the modification to "blind" as
in blind obedience. It's the thinking that's the important bit ...
whether we talking faith or any other system of beliefs, moral or
otherwise. The examined life.

Clearly doing the same as ordered after thinking is not obedience or
faith in the usual blind sense, but is an assertion of the freedom to
question / disagree / disobey.

Despite Platt's avoidance of the questions, you have brought us back
to the subject, the basis on which to make such a judgement. Even
patriotism can be pragmatic, provided the choice is free and fair (and
moral).

BTW Platt, even you cannot have really meant "fight evil with evil" can you ?
Ian

On 9/25/06, Ben Golden <theplaidninja at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Arlo, forgive me for not responding to your points directly.  I find that
> often the pattern of comment-response-response leads to more and more
> questions with little hope of consensus ever being reached.  I'm still stuck
> on your initial point and trying to find a way to communicate my stuckness.
>
> [Arlo]
> Blind obedience to social structures invariably leads to immoral behavior.
> [Ben]
> I assume that by social structures you mean static social patterns, as
> Pirsig would define them.  The function of static social patterns--really of
> static patterns altogether--is to preserve quality.  This end is encouraged
> by blind obedience.  Blind obedience prohibits dynamic quality (higher
> quality) but it also shuts down challenges from biological patterns (lower
> quality).  To say that blind obedience leads to immorality (low quality) is
> to ignore the abundance of (static) quality that is preserved by obey the
> social structures that issued the order.
>
> I'm on the fence as to whether Platt's example of the American military is a
> good counter-example, but there are many others.  For instance, the Geneva
> conventions and the constitution are static social patterns.  Does the act
> of blindly following these patterns invariably lead to immorality?  By
> challenging these patterns (ie not blindly following) one might find dynamic
> quality and improve them.  But one also might regress to much worse/less
> moral behavior.
>
> When you start to give concrete examples of what to blindly follow, it's
> much easier to determine whether it is moral or not to follow.  Platt's
> admitted that it is not moral for soldiers to rape, nor is it moral to obey
> orders to commit suicide.  You add that it is moral to drop an atom bomb on
> Japan or to shoot a young girl on a battlefield; Platt disagrees and I think
> I side with him.  Your underlying argument seems to be that because of these
> examples, it's inevitable that in all cases of blind following, immorality
> will result.
>
> On an inorganic level, consider an arrow that flies in a straight line--is
> it acting morally?  Well, if it's a high quality arrow then it's a moral one
> and from an inorganic perspective an arrow that flies straight is high
> quality.  But if the arrow's about to kill an innocent person, would you say
> it's acting immorally?  Yes and no.  From an irorganic perspective it's
> moral.  From the intellectual perspective of altruism, it's acting
> immorally.  Yet you cannot infer from this that all arrows that fly in
> straight lines will eventually do something immoral.
>
> It also occurs to me that perhaps what you really want isn't for soldiers to
> stop blindly following, but rather to follow a different but still static
> set of patterns.  You want them to have a code of conduct that differs from
> the one the military hands to them, wherein they sometimes do something
> other than what they're ordered to do.  But you still want them to do what
> you want them to do.  You seem to hold equal scorn for a soldier who's
> ordered to rape and blindly follows that order as you do for a soldier who's
> ordered not to rape and disobeys that order.  Only one of them has done what
> you initially sought to condemn--blindly follow.  Indeed if everyone blindly
> follows the instruction not to rape, this immoral deed would never take
> place
>
> Now I may be misunderstanding your use of the word blindly.  Consider:
>
> A is ordered to do x.
> A does x.
>
> B is ordered to do x.
> B thinks about it.
> B does x.
>
> A is a blind follower.  B is not.  Yet in order for A and B to truly be
> different, there must be some instances where:
>
> B is ordered to do x.
> B thinks about it.
> B does y.
>
> Platt and I have argued that in a military setting, soldier A is generally
> preferable to soldier B.  You can give specific examples where this is not
> the case, but in those cases it's not the blind following that causes
> immorality; it's the immoral order itself.  To suggest that by not blindly
> following, soldiers can easily distinguish between moral orders and immoral
> ones I find somewhat curious.
>
> It's true that at Nuremberg, Nazi official uses blind obedience as a defence
> for their actions.  It's not clear that that's necessarily what they were
> doing.  Consider for instance a young German soldier who does not blindly
> follow orders.  He has deep issues with what his government is doing, so he
> discusses the matter with close friends, all of whom support the Nazi party.
>  Unconvinced, he speaks to his father, who offers an anecdote about a
> Jewish businessman who once cheated him.  Still unconvinced, he goes to the
> library and reads Nietzsche.  Finally he resigns himself to the fact that
> his doubts were unwarranted.  Now this soldier never blindly follows his
> country's leadership.  Yet by supporting his government, he does act
> immorally.
>
> So in summary, it's not clear to me that immorality follows from blindly
> following, since I can find many cases where one occurs and the other
> doesn't.
>
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