Hi Ron --
[Ham, previously to Nick]:
Freedom, Liberty, and Justice are values. Do you believe values are "intellectual patterns" that we can't sense or feel without intellect? Is the joy you experience from a walk in the woods something you have to conceptualize about? Are peace and beauty not directly sensed as an immanent part of your awareness?
[Ron]:
May you touch freedom? may you see liberty? may you taste justice? Do animals sense peace and beauty?
Do you touch, see, or taste Quality? Is Excellence an organic sensation? You said to Nick:
Nick, you use the terms "Justice" and "liberty" as though they stand for objective universal truths. MoQ rejects objective universal views.
Yet, The Pirsigian notion of Quality (DQ) is a universal view. And it is from this universal concept that "patterns of Quality" are said to be derived. You told Nick that "Gravity is a concept, same as Justice and Liberty."
You see, Ron, this is why I prefer Value to "quality" as a term to designate what we sense as Goodness (or Evil). Unlike Quality, which is an intellectual appraisal of something experienced, Value is an immediate sensibility. In fact, it is the non-intellectual status of one's self-awareness. Which is why I define the individual subject as value-sensibility.
Frankly, I don't know what animals sense, aside from organic sensation and the fear of predators they interpret from their five senses. I do know that human beings are value-sensible creatures, and that this is the modus operandi of their behavior. Humans are unique in the ability to create and achive what they value or aspire to. This gives man a special role in existence beyond the survival instinct.
This is what I like about the Philosophy of Individual Valuism, as opposed to universal or collectivist Qualityism. The anonymous author is clear on this point:
"Value is a property that exists within minds. Something can be valued by some people in the world, nobody in the world, or even everyone in the world, but there cannot be a value that is 'objective,' 'necessary,' or 'a priori'." [Ron]:
He starts from the assumption that reality is divided into subjects and objects, this is an intellectual assumption and proves nothing.
If we "kill intellect and all intellectual patterens" as well as sensibility in order to prove that all is Quality, we render emotion insensible and lose our capacity to realize value. Okay, so Pirsig and I are at odds on this issue. I'm not any happier about this disagreement than you are, but "unrealized value" is an oxymoron. Without a subjective agent to realize value it doesn't exist. I don't see valuation as an "intellectual pattern" but as the human ability to realize value "pre-intellectually" (to use Pirsig's term). And where there is individual subjectivity there must also be objective experience. It's the self/other dichotomy that characterizes existence.
Fortunately, it appears that I am free to present this anti-MoQ view on this forum, at least so long as I do not associate it with "right-wing" individualism.
Thanks for the critique, Ron. I hope this clarifies my epistemological position.
Regards, 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/
