[MD] The Moral Landscape

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,


> Steve said to dmb:
> Harris doesn't think that he is hamstrung in making the case he wants to make. His next TED talk could not possibly be enhanced by including such phrases as "the evolution of static patterns toward dynamic Quality." Am I wrong?

>
> dmb says:
>
> Well, your point is not wrong so much as it is ridiculous. Are we really going to take the term "vocabulary" so literally? Do you honestly think the purpose of explaining the MOQ to Sam would be forcing him to adopt the terms "static" and "Dynamic"?


Steve:
I just assumed that if you wanted to explain the MOQ to someone you
would want to start by explaining the first cut of Quality as
static/dynamic as preferable to subjective/objective, but I guess
that's not what you meant.


DMB:
> C'mon, Steve. Explaining Pirsig's argument against value-free science would be a matter of giving Sam some conceptual tools, not just new terms.

Steve:
But he can already argue against value-free science without proposing
a new metaphysics. Harris wrote:

"Many people worry that there is something unscientific about making
such value judgments. But this split between facts and values is an
illusion. Science has always been in the values business. Good science
is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value
judgments; good science is the result of scientists making their best
effort to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to
reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. The very
idea of “objective” knowledge (that is, knowledge acquired through
careful observation and honest reasoning) has values built into it, as
every effort we make to discuss facts depends upon principles that we
must first value (e.g. logical consistency, reliance on evidence,
parsimony, etc). This is how norms of rational thought are made
effective. As far as our understanding of the world is concerned—there
are no facts without values."



DMB:
What if he could open his next TED talk by saying there is a rational,
humanistic, evolutionary basis on which to make claims about human
values and human flourishing? MOST intellectuals view facts and values
as separate. Most educated Americans think that nothing scientific can
be said about morals. The audience at those TED talks, for example. I
think we ought not underestimate their capacity to take ideas
seriously. On the other hand, the levels of static quality could
easily be described in ordinary terms that require no explanation. The
biological, social and intellectual levels of quality are just things
like health, wealth and truth. These basic hierarchies have already
been well established in developmental psychology.


Steve:
Good point. I think it may be possible to explain conflicts of types
of values and give clarity to moral conflict by talking about
biological vs. social values and social vs. intellectual values.  This
is a tool for making sense of conflict that Harris does not currently
have which may perhaps be articulated without appeal to undefined
Quality and dynamic static first cuts and the like.

For Harris, the reason people disagree about values is because liberal
intellectuals do not think they exist and religious conservatives
think that they come from religious texts. We will come to agree about
values only when we agree that morals are about the well being of
conscious creatures capable of experiencing  happiness and suffering
and when science better understands such states of consciousness and
the states of the world that give rise them.

One unsolved problem in defining well-being that seems particularly
intractable is the question of group versus individual well-being
which may be better understood in terms of the conflicting
social-intellectual and biological-social moral codes. So perhaps this
is an area where Pirsigians can offer intellectual tools.

Best,
Steve