[MD] The Moral Landscape and Thee

[david buchanan]

Steve said to all MOQers:
It is clear that Harris's project in his latest book is the same as Pirsig's in Lila--to demonstrate that morality is open to rational inquiry and that is it possible to know truths about morality in the sense that we say we know truths about science.

dmb says:
I think that's true enough. Pirsig attacks scientific objectivity and SOM precisely because, as Harris puts it, that view is what leads us to "think that there’s just no such thing as moral truth" and "there’s nothing about our intuitions of right and wrong and good and evil that actually connects to reality in any scientific sense". I think Pirsig would totally agree that this situation constitutes "an intellectual emergency". Based on the way Harris describes this intellectual emergency, I think it's fair to say the problem has a name. Sam says he consistently encounters "people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can’t say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life". That's what he thinks is "really quite dangerous" and "on its face ridiculous". It's this relativism that creates a moral vacuum, into which slip the most reactionary and vacuous of moralities. It's as if anyone with any sense at all has been paralyzed or hogtied. 


It seems to me that Pirsig's solution to this intellectual emergency would be of interest to Sam Harris, to say the least. Would you be interested in drafting a letter to Sam explaining how the MOQ might serve his project? Maybe we could all do it together, as a group project. Who knows, maybe it would actually make a positive difference. Maybe it'll actually introduce some quality into the public debate about morality. Pun intended.