Hi Craig --
So I suppose hermaphrodites refute your theory. I hope you're kidding that one dichotomy "accounts" for all these differences.
No, I'm quite serious. Contrariety is the dual nature of what we call existence but is really the extremes of Value as sensed by the conscious agent. The subject's discrimination (value judgment) parses or mediates these extremes, so that we experience degrees of value -- from perfect goodness to merciless evil, to cite a moral example. This makes value relational in a pluralistic world, in the same way that time and space are relational within their experiential limits. Exquisite sensitivity to a range of values is a distinguishing factor of human awareness, and it is why man's reality is far more complex than that of other creatures whose tastes and preferences are directed primarily at sustaining their biological existence.
Inasmuch as the "extremes" of any system define its fundamental limits, the self/other dichotomy is fundamental to contrariety, while "difference" accounts for man's valuistic sensibility. That's why I maintain that value is always experienced relationally; it is always represented as the experience of something more/less valuable than something else, relative to the self. This is not to deny that Value (i.e., Pirsig's Dynamic Quality) hypothetically may be absolute in Essence, except that Essence is more than Value, and such descriptions are beyond human conception.
As far as hermaphrodites are concerned, they are an anomaly of nature, as are homosexuality, autism, color-blindness, and tone-deafness. We identify these anomalies readily, because they stand out in a world we've come to rely on as heterogeneous and binary in nature. That, again, demonstrates man's sense of symmetry/asymmetry, whether realized in art, gender, morality, or the laws of thermodynamics.
Good question, Craig. I'm pleased to see that you're still paying attention.
Essentially yours, 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/
