Hi Platt --
I think you are erroneously lumping hurricanes, light waves and
billboards with atoms, molecules, cells and organisms which have
the capacity to respond and adapt to their environments, not to
mention self-combine with others of their kind to transcend to new forms.
Again, atoms are significantly different than rocks or houses.
I don't know where you draw the line with objective entities. But it
doesn't matter to me because I'm a phenomenalist who believes that all
physical reality is intellectualized and conceptual. The perceived ontogeny
(order and evolution) of inorganic and organic matter is an externalized
representation of Essential Value framed in the space/time dimensions of
human awareness. We each construct such an image of external reality, and
its universality affords a common ground for human activity and discourse.
Since this is the only reality we know, it's upsetting and annoying to be
told that existence isn't "real" in a metaphysical sense. But isn't Pirsig
proclaiming the same message when he tell us it's all patterns of Quality?
He may not openly admit that this is a phenomenalist view, and some regard
the MoQ as only an esthetic paradigm of reality, yet he has defined physical
reality as Quality patterns. Given his assertion that "experience creates
static patterns of value", can there be any doubt that this is a fundamental
principle of his ontogeny? Are not Prisig and I both sayiug that _we_the
"experiencers" create existence from value?
Wouldn't you agree that evolution requires something more than "mechanical
behavior?" As Pirsig asked: "Why, for example, should a group
of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor
of chemistry? What's the motive?" (Lila, 11)
I would agree that the universe has a "purpose" and that it is perceived as
"intelligently" designed to achieve that purpose, the evolution of Man being
central to the design. But teleology and the "intelligence" imparted to it
are moral precepts of the subjective observer, not attributes intinsic to an
"external system". If we were not limited to space/time cognizance, the
notion of a differentially related system moving incrementally toward
"something better" would be dumb. For what better objective could existence
seek than returning to the absolute source from which it originated?
The one thing I cannot doubt is my own value sensibility.
That's why I find your philosophy appealing. But, I can't help
but think of that truck. It may be only real "in my mind." but
I still avoid stepping in front of it as it comes barreling down
the road toward me.
Indeed, disaster, accidents, and death are inevitable misfortunes in the
struggle to survive. Although we see them as "evils", they are nothing but
the "chaotic" side of actualized existence which is balanced by the
"orderly" side. Value is always sensed as polar, in the same way that
existents have positive and negative properties. You just saw a dramatic
demonstration of man's bicameral brain, one half operating "serially" and
the other in "parallel". Duality applies to everything in nature, from the
anabolic/metabolic processes of biogenesis to male/female gender. What is
created must be destroyed; we must accept both 'the bitter and the sweet' of
this dichotomy if we want to survive in life and make the best of it. But
the choice is ours.
Essentially,
Ham
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