[MD] Correctness and Usefulness

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, > 

> [Platt]
> > Pirsig proposes a universal moral order.  Postmodernists
> > propose moral relativism.
> 
> [Ian]
> > 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."

Check the context, Ham. Pirsig makes it clear that this is the perspective
of subject-object science. It is NOT the perspective of the MOQ.. 

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

>  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".

As you know that there are four moral levels in the MOQ, each having 
different effects on man. The moral value of sitting on a hot stove is 
completely different from the moral value of free speech. 
 
> 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."

As you know,  Edington's views of  morality are NOT the same as Pirsig's.

> 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.

Do you and Edington find the Holocaust immoral? If so, on what basis is 
your "value-sensibility" superior to Hitler's?

Regards,
Platt