[MD] Morality, Abortion and the MoQ

[Ham Priday]

Michael, Steve, Ron, and All --

I suppose there's a natural human tendency among philosophy scholars to 
judge the importance of a thesis by its social applications.  We seem to be 
looking for ready-made maxims and pithy quotes that support our own 
"morality system", dismissing or rejecting ideas that suggest opposing 
views.  It's as if a particular philosophy is no good if doesn't "authorize" 
what we believe to be moral in practice.  Yet, if ontology, cosmology, 
epistemology, and metaphysics were theorized to accommodate a particular set 
of moral principles, their authors would be disingenuous.  Putting praxis 
before theory is, to me, putting the cart before the horse.  Philosophy is 
not an instruction manual for moral behavior.

On the issue of abortion, Steve got at the heart of the moral problem when 
he said ...

> Obviously, there is no analogous "moment of conception"
> for making the distinction between human and non-human
> in biological evolutionary terms. Do you see the problem here?

And Ron put Steve's coment in a philosophical context:

> You touch on a very important point, in MoQ, the term
> morality takes on a different meaning, it's not a guide
> to distinguish right from wrong or even the common
> understanding of betterness, but the understanding
> of tendencies toward certain types of static patterns
> and their relationships.

The moral issue -- what is right and wrong, how humans should behave -- is 
the last thing to be inferred from a philosophy, and to reject the 
fundamentals out of hand for moral or polemic reasons is not giving due 
consideration to the philosopher's efforts.

Unfortunately, Pirsig has compounded the problem by subtitling LILA "An 
Inquiry into Morals", thus setting himself up as a moralist.  I think we all 
realize by now that
Pirsig's Quality thesis is no such thing.  LILA is essentially a romantic 
novel based on anecdotes from the author's life as a philosopher.  Yes, it 
makes some thought-provoking statements about cultural values and 
intellectual pursuits, mostly from the anthropological viewpoint of a social 
liberalist.   But, as far as authoritative moral guidance is concerned, it 
raises more questions than it answers.

This may be why you're not scoring with the MoQists on this particular 
topic, Michael.

Best regards,
Ham