[MD] Christian Ethics and U.S. Law

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [Arlo previously]
> An interesting point of agreement? Although I am tempted to ask, what 
> ethics are you ready to accept from the Indians?
> 
> [Platt]
> Kindness to children.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Err, I thought you keep reminding me how they "dashed their 
> children's brains out on rocks"? Or are you just funnin' me? (As my 
> dad used to say).
> 
> [Platt]
> Tell me more about decisions based on "spirit."
> 
> [Arlo]
> Intuition. Gut feelings. Or as Pirsig quoted Einstein, "... 
> intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience".
> 
> [Platt]
> Tell me more about decisions based on "spirit."
> 
> [Arlo]
> Maybe this should be another thread? Anyway, here is a good passage 
> from The Guidebook to ZMM that describes this.
> 
> "This is the idea of intuition that you can find in the writings of 
> Henri Bergson (1859-1941), who described intuition with phrases like 
> "intellectual sympathy." It is also the idea of intuition that young 
> Phaedrus encountered in the writings of Albert Einstein, who said 
> that the universal laws of the cosmos could only be reached by 
> "intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience" 
> (quoted in ZMM, p. 99). That idea would be carried forward in the 
> narrator's reflections (undoubtedly inspired by, if not inherited 
> from, Phaedrus) about the relation of Quality to caring (ZMM, pp. 25, 
> 247). Just as for Einstein the intuition of cosmic laws is rooted in 
> a sympathetic understanding of experience, so for the narrator the 
> intuition of Quality is rooted in caring about what one is seeing and 
> doing. But for the narrator the flow goes both ways. Caring-which, 
> you might care to note, involves both willing and feeling-is 
> reciprocally related to Quality. The more you care in your knowing 
> and doing, the more you see (or intuit) Quality. The more you intuit 
> Quality, the more you care. "A person who sees Quality and feels it 
> as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he 
> sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of 
> Quality" (ZMM, p. 247).
> 
> The second frequently made and presently pertinent statement is that 
> intuition is holistic. When you intuit, you see wholes in their 
> wholeness. In contrast, when you are engaged in an analytic mode of 
> thought, you seek to know things by breaking them down into parts and 
> subparts (or, in the narrator's terms, concepts and subconcepts-ZMM, 
> p. 86). The rational, analytic mode of thinkking, exemplified in 
> ZMM's breakdown of a motorcycle (pp. 63367), belongs to the "classic" 
> mentality, whereas the holistic, intuitive mode belongs to the 
> "romantic" mentality. In terms of ZMM's landscape analogy (pp. 
> 69-70), rational analysis is what you are doing when you are sorting 
> the handful of sand into varrious piles on the basis of various 
> criteria; intuition is what you are exercising when you grasp the 
> entire handful of sand as a whole. As the analogy suggests, one and 
> the same object can furnish the material for both rational analysis 
> and intuition. While intuition might have its own proper objects 
> (e.g., as some intuitionists sugggest, value), it might also share 
> objects with other modes of thought. You can analyze the motorcycle 
> in terms of its parts and functions; additionally or alternatively, 
> you can intuitively grasp the cycle as the "right thing" for you, a 
> vehicle that suits your style. In the latter case, your intuition is 
> still a nonsensory act of knowing, even though the motorcycle is a 
> sensory object-the cycle doesn't carry a visible label that says 
> "right thing." (Guidebook to ZMM, pp 172-173)
> 
> [Platt]
> Haven't you said all language is metaphor? What then is the relation 
> of language to pre-language (pre-intellectual)experience (perception).
> 
> [Arlo]
> All language is metaphor. However, "laws" are "literal", meaning that 
> we pragmatically accept a shared understanding of what a "law" says. 
> But, even given this, lawyers debate endless on what any given "law means", no?
> 
> [Platt]
> Your introduction above and here of "spirit" leaves me wondering. 
> What is spirit, where did it come from, who created it, and how can I get some?
> 
> [Arlo]
> Try joining a drumming circle. :-)
>   
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