Hi all -- I opened this topic on April 2nd to confirm what I felt was the fundamental problem of the MoQ -- its denial of subjective individuality. I also promised to report my conclusions after hearing what you all had to say about Value as it relates to the individual.
One thing that your comments demonstrate conclusively is that, for all its emphasis on Quality, the MoQ is a culturally-based philosophy in which the individual subject is enveloped in experiences, concepts, and principles that are not indigenous to him but are abstracted from a collective reservoir variously referred to as Intellect, Social Consciousness, Experience, and Evolutionary Process. Relegating proprietary cognizance (subjectivity) to a patterned universe serves Pirsig's need to eliminate S/O distinctions and establish Quality as the underlying reality of existence. As there is no other reality for Pirsig, existence is its own source and end. Like Parmenides' quintessential elements 'earth-air-fire-water', the four levels of Quality are the creative agents of the experienced world. This tetrology is an "aesthetic continuum" whose individual levels and patterns are deduced from cultural distinctions. Here is the evidence as culled from the comments offered thus far: Ron Kulp on 4/2: > Pre-intellectual is the most real and certain and moral > because it is raw experience before we develop an > intellectual understanding of the experience in culturally > derived linguistic and grammatical terms. > Pirsig tends to stray from anthropic principle if you ask me, > which is the whole point of his metaphysic, busting that > notion of otherness as an absolute entity in itself. > Sense of Value is an individual endeavor within an intellectual, > social, biological and inorganic context. Marsha on 4/2: > The individual (self) is process, and that process is valuing. > If all processes shut down, then the individual will cease to > exist. The relevance of value to the individual, at least in the > most basic sense, is it is dependent on value for its existence. Magnus Berg on 4/3: > Yes, it makes very much sense to level by level build a "selfness", > instead of just introducing it in one single race, your "man". > Yes, man *is* just a bystander. You can never get a MoQer > to say anything different. Arlo Bensinger on 4/3: > It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object. > And because without objects there can be no subject...because > the objects create the subject's awareness of himself...Quality is > the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is > made possible. Krimel on 4/3: > Cosmic purpose? This is an absurd notion. If I were to grant you > that such a thing exists. Please, I am seriously begging you, to > tell me what it is and how I would recognize it if I saw it. > Or couldn't the cosmos have a purpose but we have none? > I want to know what good is a purpose if you have to have > the special decoder ring to figure it out? Ron Kulp on 4/3: > Existence or experience is neither the object of experience > or the subject of experience, those are intellectual constructs to > understand experience not experience itself. Experience IS. > Before Intellection. Bo Skutvik on 4/4: > Pirsig either had to drop Quality as reality's ground or Man, > and he kept Quality - hopefully for the below sketched reason. > He had relative recently conceived the Quality Idea and - we > must assume - still stood with one foot in SOM and the other > in a most tentative MOQ . Now, seen from SOM its plain that > humankind is the only species that 1) has language 2) is > conscious, but by the same logic it's just as plain that it's > language that has created the concept "man" and also that > the world only exist for us - in our consciousness. SOM > leaves us confounded, whatever concept we believe is basic, > it splits along the S/O fault. It's this the MOQ sets out to resolve - > and does - by leaving the S/O divide a mere static level (the > intellectual) of it Dynamic/Static (Value) metaphysics. Magnus Berg on 4/5: > To explain the MoQ without the levels is as easy as it would > be for you to explain your "essentialism" without "man". Krimel on 4/5: > Of course each of us is the center of our own existence. > But none of us makes choices for the rest of the universe. > It does not bend to our whims. We bend to its. We seek > to influence others but do so only to the extent that they > allow themselves to be influenced. The movers and shakers > of history are so, not because they could move and shake > but because others were moved and allow themselves to > be shaken. Ian Glendenning on 4/8: > WOW this thread is MoQ.Discuss in a nutshell - it should > be preserved for posterity - it has everything sex, and drugs, > and taxes, and education, and politics ... and two serious issues. > (1) The perennial confusion between intellectual / individual vs > collective / social. > (2) The perennial confusion between the teleology of the cosmos > as a monolithic whole vs the purposes arising in patterns within it. Krimel on 4/9: > Like sensation, emotions are examples of the pre-intellectual. > But they are the first layer in the processing of sensation. > The emotional responses are built in, what triggers them is > learned. Our emotional responses can be trained and they alter > our behavior without conscious involvement. > As the first layer of perception emotion provides a fundamentally > positive or negative first response to stimulation. All things being > equal our intellectual perceptions will be colored by this > non-conscious emotional valance. Platt on 4/9: > Right. "Moral discrimination occurs simultaneously with sense > discrimination. Physical sensing and moral judgment have from > the start been simultaneous and identical processes." From > "Philosophical Materialism" by Richard C. Vitzthum. Thanks, and regards to you all, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
