At 12:46 PM 5/6/2008, you wrote:
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.
Says who???
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.
They are empty, empty, empty...
Consider the empirical difference between the subjective Self and
objective Otherness.
And what would that be?
Self is the immanent, conscious locus of awareness.
Self is a ever-changing collection of overlapping, interrelated,
inorganic, biological, social and intellectual, static patterns of value.
It has no being, cannot be objectively localized, measured,
quantified, or observed.
If you are saying self has no place, time or nature, that sounds
about right. Empty.
Otherness is all the rest.
Opposite-from-non-self. Empty.
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.
Quality is Emptiness. You can divide and label it many way you
like, but it is still Quality (Dynamic/static).
It is that Quality _is_ morality, not _has_ a moral conscience.
No, Marsha. The primary source is not morality, it is potentiality.
Quality is morality.
Morality is what man chooses for society based on what is
intellectualized as "good for him".
That is man-made definition of morality. Quality IS morality, with
or without man.
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.
Man-made morality is important, I think, but I'm not positive. This
man-made morality has been a dismal failure.
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.
You do have some ideas that interest me, but not the above two
sentence. This sounds very much like baloney. Maybe if you change
source to emptiness, it would make some sense.
As an artist, when you produce an original painting on canvas, how
do you know it has value?
I can know if painting a canvas has had value because I experienced
the value of painting it.
We can know it only by experiencing it.
You would know if there were value in viewing it, by viewing it.
If you were the canvas would you be aware of your value?
I am not a canvas so I don't know.
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.
I have no yet come to a decision about existence other than it's
Quality/Emptiness.
This truth is sorely missing in Pirsig's MoQ.
Says who?
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.
You confuse Social morality with Quality. Not much I can do about that.
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.
Okay.
Thanks for your enlightenment on the interrelationship of value
patterns. Unfortunately, your maxim "the moral is relative to the
difference" is incomprehensible to me.
I thought it was quite insightful.
Regards,
Ham
Regards,
Marsha
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars...
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