Craig --
This message appears to have been posted following you response to my most recent one, although it is a response to my earlier post of 12/4 in which I said:
"Only a sensible agent can realize Value, and neither subject nor object could exist in the absence of a non-relational source."
This is where we differ Ham, the MoQ suggests that Value realises the 'agent' and it is after that point that subjects and objects are deduced to 'exist'.
I don't understand what you mean by "Value realizes the agent". Since an agent is an active, responsible cause (in this case, of actualizing being from Value), it seems that you've stated the subject and predicate in reverse. Are you suggesting that value is a cognitive entity with the sensibility to realize and the intellect to "deduce"? If so, why bother to create a complex self-aware creature with a proprietary sense of value and the capacity to reason? If Value is the Creator, wouldn't it be more efficacious and sensible to simply work with the patterns themselves?
Whilst I am on this, I suggested the MoQ was a sort of allegory, which you found not really very philosophical/metaphysical. I agree but: 'The One can only be described allegorically... Socrates uses a heaven-and-earth analogy...'.( ZMM p381). Pirsig uses the DQ/SQ analogy to describe how static patterns of value are drawn toward the One. He has presented us a metaphysics set in the form of a novel.Brilliant!!
The allegory of Pirsig's novel may be "brilliant", but does it make metaphysical sense? For me, man is perfectly equipped to be the agent of value. He is an independent entity endowed with an exquisite sense of value from which, by experience and intellection, he constructs a world of beingness in time and space. He is able to manipulate the constituents of this environment to his advantage and communicate with others of his species to develop and maintain a value-based moral culture. We don't think of man as a complex arrangement of synapses and neurons in the brain giving rise to the illusion of self. Does it make better sense to reduce the human being to "static patterns of value drawn toward the One"?
[T]hink of it this way: we, as static PoV's, responsive (or not) to DQ are all in the process of writing our own novels and one of the most beautiful examples of this is Marcel Proust's 'A La Cherch du Temps Perdu' (I do not know if you have read it, Ham but I highly recommend it).
No, I haven't read Proust's massive novel, and I'd have diffiiculty identifying myself with this author's life style. (But I will keep your recommendation in mind.)
Since you have indicated interest in continuing this conversation, despite our differences, you're free to lead the discussion at your pleasure.
Thanks, Andre. 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/
