[MD] Correctness and Usefulness

[MarshaV]

At 09:14 PM 5/5/2008, you wrote:

>Platt, Krimel, Arlo and All --
>
>[Platt, to Krimel]:
>>Pirsig proposes a universal moral order.  Postmodernists
>>propose moral relativism.
>
>[Platt, reconfirming to Arlo]:
>>Both true, a universal moral "order" that "orders" things according to
>>their "relative" morality in layers.
>>
>>A far cry from postmodernism where it's all relative.
>
>Yes, Platt, but on page p.317 of LILA, Pirsig says:
>
>"Morals have no objective reality.  You can look 
>through a microscope or telescope or 
>oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you 
>will never find a single moral.  There aren't 
>any there.  They are all in your head."

Greetings Ham,


>If morals are all in my head, morality is what 
>is good for me.  In other words, it's relative to the observing subject.

Maybe it's relative to the connection between the 
patterns which comprise the observing subject and 
the patterns being observed.  Everything is connected to everything.

>By what ontological principle, then,.does the 
>author posit morality as the order of the 
>universe?  Is he saying that individuals are 
>programmed by the universe to prefer certain 
>values?  If so, we are predetermined (by nature 
>or genetics) to live out our lives in a 
>prescribed way, which means man is not a free agent.

There would be no free agent when Social level 
patterns are at the reigns.  Freedom develops with Intellectual patterns.


>   Or, is he saying that Reality, as Quality, 
> has a moral conscience of its own that 
> determines the course of evolution?  This would 
> suggest a teleological principle akin to Divine 
> Authority.  In either case, individual behavior 
> is made subordinate to universal law, karma, or a "higher source".

It is that Quality _is_ morality, not _has_ a 
moral conscience.  I remember reading Edington's 
"sermon".  I remember agreeing with much that he 
wrote.  But being a moral relativist, to me, 
means that we are individuals that are 
_different_, ever-changing collection of 
overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, 
social and intellectual, static patterns of 
value.  The "moral" is "relative" to the difference.

Marsha


>I'm no postmodernist, either, but I happen to be 
>a moral relativist.  As a believer in an 
>absolute primary source, I find myself in the 
>awkward position of having to defend moral 
>relativity against objectivists who are holding 
>out for a "Higher Authority".  I call your 
>attention to these paragraphs from Steve 
>Edington's "Confessions of a Moral Relativist". 
>(Edington is a Unitarian minister.)
>
>"The assumption being made about morality and 
>codes of moral behavior here is that they are 
>ultimately rooted in some source beyond human 
>experience or human construction.  It could be 
>either in a Deity, however conceived; or in what 
>our Enlightenment ancestors-Thomas Jefferson, for example-called 'Natural Law.'
>
>"This is a common, and quite understandable, 
>assumption.  What parent, for example, has not 
>said, at some point of exasperation, to his or 
>her child after running out of offering 
>explanations for a parental command: "Because I 
>said so, and that's all the reason you 
>need!"  ...There may be debate over just who or 
>what this "I" is that is "saying so" but the 
>idea that Morality (with a capital 'M') 
>ultimately derives from a fixed source that is 
>beyond us is a commonly held one.  And there are 
>those who firmly hold that to question, or to 
>deviate from, such an idea is to teeter on the 
>precipice of a very dangerous chasm called 'moral relativism'.
>
>"Well, teetering or not, I'd like to make the 
>case, the positive case, for moral relativism 
>today, with my underlying point being that it is 
>really the only kind of morality there is.  A 
>related point is that it is the reality of moral 
>relativism that calls us, as human beings, to 
>moral responsibility and moral decision making.
>
>"...Since my concept of God is really that of a 
>Life Force or of a Power within Ourselves 
>similar to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the 
>'Spark of the Divine' he felt resided in the 
>souls of all people, then I believe we have this 
>power within ourselves to draw upon as we make 
>our moral choices and as we take responsibility for them."
>
>My point, of course, is that "moral decision 
>making" is precisely what human beings are put 
>on earth to do.  My "evidence" is that man is 
>the only creature endowed with the 
>value-sensibility to discriminate good from bad 
>in a moral context.  In other words, man has the 
>power of his own authority, which is why I 
>object to Morality or Value preferences being attributed to a higher authority.
>
>I submit that if the primary source--whether it 
>be God, DQ or Essence--were to control the 
>conduct of mankind or grant him "special 
>favors", there could be no such thing as an 
>autonomous agent, which in my philosophy is the 
>'raison d'être' and core morality of man's existence.
>
>Essentially yours,
>Ham
>
>
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