[MD] Natural Law

[skutvik at online.no]

John 

29 July 

Bo writes to Steve:
> > Have you read something again Steve? Kant tried to rescue moral
> > FROM reason's a-morality. The empiricists had found that there was
> > no qualities, values (and consequently) morals "out there", all such
> > were only  in our subjective minds and thus not real. Finding a 
> > base for morals from SOM's (intellect's) premises is futile.

John butts in:
> Here is why your formulation of SOM=intellect falls flat, Bo. Finding a
> base for morals in SOM is futile, because SOM is the metaphysical stance
> that there is no such thing as objective morality.  Its all subjective
> and relative. 

Right, but ALL static levels have put up a fierce resistance yet been 
transcended by a new level (with DQ a midwife) so the MOQ 
transcending intellect-as-SOM is DQ's last and final job, but also the 
hardest. 

> However, intellect is the tool which we use to discover true morality,
> as Pirsig used his in his journey of discovery and thinking about the
> subject in his two books.  Your equating SOM with intellect is
> confusing you.
  
Intellect a tool, that's in SOM where the term "intellect" means turning 
of mental wheels, but the MOQ's  4th. STATIC level is nothing of the 
kind - it is SOM itself - and this "Copernican revolution" is hard to 
grasp and makes an understanding of the MOQ so difficult.  

The full static range must be completed before the MOQ can be 
reached, it's impossible to go from the 3rd. level to the MOQ, but on 
the other hand there is as much resistance from the 4th. level to be 
transcended by the MOQ as there was (and still is) from the social 
level to be transcended by the intellectual.   

Thanks John - finally I understand what blocks your way to the MOQ.  

> Remember how Ron kept asking how the SOL is any better at explanation?
>  Well you just provided the perfect example of how it's actually much
> worse.

If it is what ails Ron? Perhaps. Anyway, the SOL is what gives the 
MOQ its explanatory power demonstrated by Pirsig in LILA, every time 
he really applies the MOQ he invariably ends in the conclusion that 
Intellect = SOM 

Bodvar