Greetings All --
For those of you who may be as tired of the Teabag dispute as I am, I'd like to offer some thoughts about Value that, as far as I know, are original with me. After all, Mr. Pirsig equated his Quality with Value and, like the MoQ, my philosophy of Essence is a valuistic ontology. I also think most people are more interested in exploring the "real world" applications of philosophy than pondering theories of a metaphysical nature.
If Pirsig's statement that "experience is the cutting edge of reality" is to be taken literally, it means that existential reality is in some sense "sculpted" or delineated by our experience of it. While the MDers seem tied to the "interrelating patterns" concept of experienced objects, largely because it was the author's term, we need a better understanding of how Quality (Value) is involved in the creation process -- that is, how Value works to shape our experience of existence.
A theory that purports to explain the nature and limits of cognitive knowledge is generally classified as "epistemology", and my explanation differs a bit from the MoQ in that I don't regard Value as "primary experience". Were we capable of experiencing Value directly we not be cognizant of a pluralistic world where things arise, interact, and disappear in sequential fashion, nor would we view our selves as entities separated from these objective phenomena. Instead, I define the subjective "self" as individualized value-sensibility, and consider all experience secondary to this innate human sensibiity.
My epistemology makes Value the essence of selfness, rather than something we connect with or "latch onto" in an external world. Our experience of things and events "outside us" is a cognitive interpretation of value-sensibility perceived from neuro-sensory data. As with other physical objects, the biological body with which we each identify and which is our "instrument" of awareness, is a "creation" of value-sensibility. So that what we call "the real world" is actually a synthesis of sensory experience, nothingness (or negation), and intellection which would not be possible without our pre-intellectual realization of Value.
Notice that this modification of Pirsig's thesis does not alter the existential "primacy" of Value (Quality), nor does it posit subjects and objects as "real" in the metaphysical sense. It does, however, replace the notion of a universe constantly "moving to betterness" with an ultimate, absolute and immutable Source which I call Essence and whose Value is uniquely man's realization.
If anyone here is interested in exploring this ontogeny with me, I will be most happy to oblige.
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/md/archives.html
