Ron, Marsha, Steve, and All --
Ron asks:
Why choose one pattern over another? Why does one pattern have more meaning than another?
Marsha wonders:
Why would one pattern be chosen over another? ... Even the notion that there is an 'I' doing the choosing is a pattern. No truth there either...
Steve muses:
Pragmatists can only say something as vague as: Better in the sense of containing more of what is good and less of what is bad. When asked, 'And exactly what do you consider good?', pragmatists can only say with Whitman 'variety and freedom,' or with Dewey, 'growth.'
It is certainly true that existence is relative. And since normal people accept the fact that existence is divided up into finite objects by cognizant subjects, the part of the MoQ that has been misnamed "SOM" must also be relative. But that's not where relativity stops.
What is "good" is what is valued in the subject's experience. This goodness can be defined in three ways: 1) what feels good, 2) what works well, and 3) what makes sense insofar as the subject apprehends it. While 1 and 3 are relative to the subject; 2 is utilitarian value which relates to mankind universally. In other words, Value is relative to the observer.
Now, each of us has a set of values that affects our worldviews differently. Steve and Ron may spot a demure young woman standing on the sidewalk, while Marsha is attracted to a Picasso painting displayed in the shop window beyond. Will and Marsha may look for poetry to please their senses, while Platt is drawn to the beauty of a sunset, I to a Mendelssohn string quartet, and so on. We each see the world through glasses of a different valuistic hue. Yet, objectively, the world is the same for all of us.
There has to be difference so that our individual perspectives can be different. (That's why Collectivism doesn't work in philosophy or economics. Vive la Différence!) Difference starts with the separation of sensible awareness from what Cusanus called "the Not-other" to create the appearance of "otherness". It is that appearance which we call our existence. We view (i.e., experience) the world as pleasurable, beautiful, moral, evil, or hopeless, depending on our value-sensibility. It is universal and personal at the same time, because we are Nature's beings as well as individuated selves. Essentially, however, we are no more than the values we seek to reclaim from the undivided Source. To put it another way, we are the created, value-receptive "other" side of the uncreated Not-other.
I've never described my epistemology in just that way before. The idea came to me while researching collectivist ideology as the bane of a secular culture. I hope it can shed some light on your ruminations.
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/
