[MD] Stuck on a Torn Slot

[118]

Hi Horse,

I am not sure if compartmentalizing each of our views into a category
is useful or even relevant.  If you want to create an MOQ school and
an anti-MOQ school, then I would have to say that I belong to the MOQ
and you are anti-MOQ.  You have created an intellectual structure that
you claim is the Truth of Quality.  This is Platonism and is what
Phaedrus was fighting against.  You take this Truth and then try to
fit everything within it making Quality subservient to Truth.  This is
classical Western thinking, and something we are trying to change.  If
the MOQ continues this way, it will become yet another Western
philosophy and there will be no change.

I am not sure if I am getting through to you, but I am happy to keep
discussing it from this viewpoint.  I think everybody's input is
valuable since this is a difficult subject, one of spiritual
rationalism.  I do not think we are quite ready to start forming
different schools like the Sophists did quite yet.  Such a thing would
be destructive and not worthy of Quality.

My opinion of course.

Regards,
Mark

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 4:31 AM, Horse <horse at darkstar.uk.net> wrote:
> Hi Ham
> I'm glad that you came out against what I have been saying and agreed with
> Mark because I think this illustrates how far Mark has moved away from
> Pirsigs MoQ - moved to a point where what he says is completely at odds with
> a Quality based reality - i.e. Quality = DQ + SQ etc. as per Pirsig - and
> why it puts him in a position where what he says has little value in terms
> of the metaphysics that the majority here understand.
>
> Cheers
>
> Horse
>
> On 05/12/2010 06:38, Ham Priday wrote:
>>
>> On 12/04/2010, 4.49 PM, Horse wrote to Mark:
>>
>>
>>> Rape and murder are defined at the social and/or intellectual level
>>> and refer to specific acts of a biological nature. Just because animals
>>> don't have concepts of rape and murder when they have sex and
>>> kill doesn't mean that certain acts of sex and killing by humans are
>>> not rape or murder. ,,,
>>
>> [Mark responds]:
>>>
>>> My point is that rape and murder do not exist at the biological level,
>>> they are social constructs. Let's take the animal world for example
>>> (bacteria are a little more difficult). There is no rape or murder at
>>> this level unless we want to anthropomorphize it. As such, the biological
>>> level is not predisposed to rape and murder, the social
>>> level is. This is an important distinction. Each level creates it's own
>>> reality.
>>
>> I think Mark's assessment of morality as "a social construct" is correct.
>>
>> What human behavior is not an "act of a biological nature"? Cannibalism is
>> a biological act. Robbing a bank is a biological act. Even legislating laws
>> against rape and murder is a biological act. I fail to see how
>> compartmentalizing human activity into "biological", "social" and
>> "intellectual" levels makes the result more or less moral than the act
>> itself. Society is the adjudicator of morality, and society is a collection
>> of like-minded human beings. Animals collect into flocks, packs, gaggles,
>> herds, hives, etc., not law-abiding "societies"; so animals do not have
>> morality other than what is instinctual for the preservation of the species.
>>
>> Now, one can argue that the urge to copulate has a biological basis, as
>> does the need to satisfy hunger by eating, whereas the desire to rob a bank
>> is motivated by monetary greed and thus is more "intellectual in nature".
>> But this does not affect the morality of the act perpetrated as adjudged by
>> society. The concept of a universal moral standard to which evolution
>> subscribes has no empirical or metaphysical basis. If it did, neither nature
>> nor mankind would exhibit "immorality", and we would not be having this
>> discussion.
>>
>> In my opinion,
>> Ham
>>
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>
> --
>
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> — Frank Zappa
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