[MD] The Moral Landscape

[david buchanan]

#1) Steve began this thread by saying:

...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 it is possible to know truths about morality in the sense that we say we know truths about science.

#2) Later that day, Steve said:
...twenty years after the publication of Lila it never seemed less likely than it does today that the MOQ vocabulary for talking about values will attain a static latch in intellectual culture. At this point, it is clear to me that Sam Harris is the public intellectual best placed to start and contribute to a needed conversation about values and rationality, and Pirsig's Quality won't help him do it.

#3) And then 14 minutes later, Steve said:
.., the basis for saying that the belief is true is whether or not the belief does or does not contribute to the evolution of static patterns toward dynamic Quality.


dmb says:

On the one hand, you say Harris and Pirsig share the same project and describe the basis of belief using the MOQ's vocabulary. (Those are your first and third statements.) On the other hand you say the MOQ's vocabulary won't help with Sam's project. (That's the second statement.)

I suspect the discrepancy has something to do with the fact that your second statement was directed to me. I mean, it looks like you'd rather contradict yourself than agree with me, probably because agreement would mean you'd have to concede my point about relativism. What the deal, Steve? Why the flip-flop? Harris's description of the problem in his latest book is very consistent with the complaints in "The End of Faith", where he actually makes use of the term "relativism". We discussed that, so I know that you know it's true. We all seem to agree that it really is an intellectual emergency, would it really be so hard to admit that "relativism" is a reasonable name for this problem? 

We don't need to convince Sam to become a philosophical mystic or to take up Zen practices. Like all projects and emergencies, this particular intellectual emergency is about our cultural reality, static reality, conventional reality. It's about the pragmatic consequences of ideas and so it's about what we can assert within the intellectually knowable side of things. It's about practical realities. And the MOQ has lots to contribute on that score. It gives us a way to conceptualize morality more broadly, a way that's based on the scientific theory of evolution. Don't you think it's fair to say Sam doesn't have that tool and doesn't it seem like that tool would serve his project well? That's the sort of thing I had in mind, anyway. That, and the pragmatic theory of truth. I think that offers the kind of realism Sam is looking for. That way, truth is flexible enough to be provisional and plural but it's also constrained by empirical reality, which is going to appeal to his scientific instincts. 

Anyway, I actually hope your apparent flip-flop is just the result of defensiveness or some old grudge. I'd like to forget about your second statement and I'd to think you had it right the first time and that your response to Platt in comment #3 was proof that you had it right the first time.