> Ham said: > To posit Quality or Value as independent of sensibility, let alone the > primary force of the universe, is an absurdity.
MP: This caught my eye. Ham this is a little like saying electricity does not exist if there is no resistor to tap the current. And in many ways that is a true statement, depending on your definition (word weasle alert) of electricity. But we all know electricity "exists" in the socket. While the socket just sits there, its arguable there is no electricity "in" it. But does that apparent "lack" of electricity in any way make us less apt to grab a child considering sticking in a fork? Is "electricity" just the flow or does it include the potential for flow? (One can make similar discussion using magnetism as an analog.) I was reading a little Schopenhauer the other day (I'm better now, thanks) and it occurred to me that his approach to "will" is very similar to Pirsig's contention of Quality underlying all patterns with one major, fundamentally transformative distinction. Schopenhauer's reality boils down to being an infinite, flat featureless plane in which our "will" operates "willy nilly" with no guide but our own. Pirsig's is the same thing ... but with a slope. Its nearly identical, but it has direction. It has potential. And this slope completely alters the perception of reality and how our S'ian "will" operates within it. So ... back to your statement above, yes... in a way Quality or Value, independent of sensibility by a sensing agent is meaningless. But they *can* still be there independently as a potential for sensibility. Even without a sensible agent, the *potential* for sensibility remains, and that makes *all* the difference. It doesn't "exist" per se, and as you say is meaningless in reality absent sensibility. But its still there, and where we have the sensibility to appreciate it, it comes alive as a flow in patterned reality. MP ---- "Don't believe everything you think." 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/
