[MD] Natural Law

[John Carl]

Yay Steve,

Steve:
> I think we agree that for the MOQ values are real, but that doesn't
> tell us that there is a right and wrong that is not relative.



John:

Well, I disagree.  And that's the crux of the matter, isn't it.  But I think
plainly the reductio ad absurdem that Pirsig employs in ZAMM, proves the
existence of a fundamental pull toward betterness.  The observable facts of
evolution indisputably prove some anti-entropic pull
An objective or absolute good, or we wouldn't be here.  Randomness is too
unlikely an explanation and also, generates no hope.

What is relative, is our individual perception and our individual position
relative to the vector arrow of Quality.

Steve:


> Instead
> I think it offers a vocabulary for articulating why you _believe_ that
> something ought to be regarded as right or wrong. It can't adjudicate
> between two people who use the MOQ vocabulary to argue opposite
> positions.
>
>
John:

Well "it" can't but the individuals in which 'it" resides sure can.  Just
like when the perfessor read the papers to the class, you can't define it,
but you know what it is.  The intuition which says what is good and bad is
always with us.

What you seem to be saying, Steve, is that Quality is valueless without
intersubjective agreement.  By "valueless", I mean pragmatically useless.
Without realization and communication of the Good, it is nothing,
worthless.  Worse than useless; for  being without action creates longing
without satisfactions.

It takes individuals to instantiate DQ, or DQ is nothing.

Logically speaking:

You have to have an Interpreter, when you have conflicts;
with individuals, you always have conflicts.
:. You have to have interpreters.



> Here's the LC quote:
> "I’ve concluded that the biggest improvement I could make in the MOQ
> would be to block the notion that the MOQ claims to be a quick fix for
> every moral problem in the
> universe. I have never seen it that way. The image in my mind as I wrote it
> was of a large football field that gave meaning to the game by telling you
> who
> was on the 20-yard line but did not decide which team would win. That was
> the point of the two opposing arguments over the death penalty described in
> Lila.That was the point of the equilibrium between static and Dynamic
> Quality. Both are moral arguments. Both can claim the MOQ for support. Just
> as two sides can go before the U.S. Supreme Court and both claim
> constitutionality, so two sides can use the MOQ, but that does not mean
> that
> either the Constitution or the MOQ is a meaningless set of ideas. Our whole
> judicial system rests on the presumption that more than one set of
> conclusions about individual cases can be drawn within a given set of moral
> rules. The MOQ makes the same presumption."
>


Yeah, I did read it before I posted, but thanks for posting it for
onlookers.

What does this metaphor of football boil down to?  Two teams, in dialogic
combat, who will win?

What is winning?  Is it majority rules?  Is it getting the football over the
goal line, more times than the other guy?  What's the framework of the
contest, in the context of the MoQ?

I see Pirsig offering exactly what I define.  A way of playing the game,
with hope of a goal.  Rather than just randomly running around in a field
without lines.  It takes people to play, and they have to be in opposition.
It doesn't work when all are going "ommmm" in harmonic perfection all the
time.

Good Forbid!


>
> Steve:
> If you reread the quote above, you'll see that it isn't about goal
> posts but just showing relative positions on an open-ended field of
> play.
>
>
>
John:

Yes, I agree.  When the field of play is intellectual formulation, the
goalposts are infinitely distant.  BUT there is a direction.  The field of
play provides a context, a way of knowing whether you are relatively closer
or more distant than an other.  Sometimes it's not real obvious, because you
are both real close.  And the roaring of the crowd might confuse one or the
other, because from the crowd's static position on the sidelines, your
opponent has inched ahead of you.  But they could be wrong in this.  And
even if right, keep racing, racing, racing and you'll catch up and surge
ahead.

Because you know which way to run.

See how knowing which way to run, by defining a field of play, is
pragmatically useful to actually getting somewhere?



>
> Steve:
> The problem I have here with Natural Law is that a description of the
> way things are now can't tell us how things ought to be in the future.
>
>
It's funny, because in a lot of ways I think things in the future ought to
be more like they were in the past, rather than the present.

And that's sad, because it indicates an actually occurring, downward trend.
It's not that comforting to have the reassurances of a metaphysics of
Quality, when all it's doing is letting you know you're getting your butt
knocked backwards.  Then it'd be nice if there was some sort of infinitely
receding goal lines of the opponent.  But since the opponent is entropy,
dead matter has a finite end.  The highest level is unbounded.  The lowest
level is not.

I guess then the value of the MoQ is to get one to dig in one's heels all
the harder.  Maybe try some different plays.

Rather than just go with the random flow.

Thanks Steve, you've been putting quite a bit of good thinking out there for
some time, and I always enjoy your posts.