Dear Marsha --
[Ham, referring to Pirsig's quote "it's all in your head."]
If morals are all in my head, morality is what is good for me. In other
words, it's relative to the
observing subject.
[Marsha]:
Maybe it's relative to the connection between the
patterns which comprise the observing subject and
the patterns being observed. Everything is connected to everything.
Reminds me of the old ditty, "shin bone's connected to the thigh bone's
connected to the leg bone's connected to the ..." Sure, everything is
connected. That's what makes the experiential universe a relational system.
But Existence is not a system: it's a self/other dichotomy. And the
contingents of this dichotomy are not jusr
"intellectualized relations", they are antinomies -- contradictory essents
that are responsible for all "difference" in actualized reality.
Consider the empirical difference between the subjective Self and objective
Otherness. Self is the immanent, conscious locus of awareness. It has no
being, cannot be objectively localized, measured, quantified, or observed.
Otherness is all the rest. It is external, universal, substantive,
quantitative, predictable. Awareness and Beingness have no attributes in
common but are absolutely divided in existence. The only thing that holds
this dichotomy together is the Value of the primary source.
It is that Quality _is_ morality, not _has_ a moral conscience.
No, Marsha. The primary source is not morality, it is potentiality.
Morality is what man chooses for society based on what is intellectualized
as "good for him". If ultimate reality were Morality, mankind could not
make these choices, and there would be no "moral conscience'. We would all
be programmed to behave as Reality dictates. Instead of free creatures, we
would be robots incapable of appreciating moral or esthetic value in our
experienced world.
The Quality that Pirsig extols is what I call the Value of our primary
Essence. The cognizant individual can realize this quality only because she
is negated from the source. As an artist, when you produce an original
painting on canvas, how do you know it has value? We can know it only by
experiencing it. If you were the canvas would you be aware of your value?
It requires an observer apart from the source of value to appreciate its
quality. Hence, the split between subjective awareness and objective
beingness. Existence represents this split or dichotomy. But existence
cannot be the ultimate reality because nothing can create itself.
This truth is sorely missing in Pirsig's MoQ. He posits Existence as "moral
quality", which it is clearly not, and stops short of positing its potential
source. The Quality
hierarchy may serve as a euphemistic paradigm for cultural morality, but it
cannot be considered a metaphysical ontology in the absence of a source to
support it.
Anyway, that's my opinion. I expect to be told that I have misrepresented
Pirsig's philosophy. And, while that's quite possible, no one has yet
convinced me that my interpretation is in error.
Thanks for your enlightenment on the interrelationship of value patterns.
Unfortunately, your maxim "the moral is relative to the difference" is
incomprehensible to me.
Regards,
Ham
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