Hi Ant --
For some unknown reason this message arrived with Adrie's name and URL
([email protected]), yet it appears to have been sent from you.
-----Original Message-----
From: ADRIE KINTZIGER
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 3:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MD] Is experience just DQ?
Adrie
2.6.2 the moral framework derived from evolution, an introduction to
Rmp's moq (thanks Ant)
the giant never sleeps.
2013/4/16 Ant McWatt <[email protected]>
Hamilton Priday stated to Ant McWatt,
April 14th 2013:
Greetings, Ant --
Uh-oh . . . now I know I'm in trouble!
Ant McWatt comments:
I don't know about that Ham, it just
might be your lucky day!
[snip note from Ant, Sat 4/13]
Ham on 4/14, cont'd:
Essentialism is a philosophy that offers a working ontology based
on an original metaphysical thesis. It includes an epistemology, but
doesn't pretend to be a "moral system" for me or anyone else.
Morality is a value orientation worked out through the individual's life
experience.
Ant McWatt comments:
Thank you for the clarification there, Ham. So, if I read you correctly,
the MOQ includes a goal of improving your life (both aesthetically and
ethically) while Essentialism is no help in these regards?
As such, certainly on face value, it seems difficult to justify wasting
my time with the latter.
I submit that before we (philosophers) set about advising people how to
improve their lives, we should know what life's purpose is and where it
ultimately leads. Hence, I put Ontology (the metaphysics of Reality) before
Morality (the do's and don’ts of personal behavior).
Man is delivered into this world meticulously packaged and fully equipped
for life, but with no instructions included. It is my conviction that this
is not some oversight of the Creator, but rather a clue to the fact that,
unlike lesser creatures who are guided by instinct, the human individual has
the capacity for "authenticity". This I believe is what Ayn Rand was
getting at in her Objectivist Epistemology in the last century.
Man still clings tenaciously to his pagan roots, as Rose Wilder Lane
eloquently pointed out in the 1940s:
"For six thousand years at least, a majority has generally believed in pagan
gods. ...that all individuals are, and by their nature should and must be,
controlled by some Authority outside themselves. ...[But] a time comes when
every normal man is a responsible human being. He is free; he is
self-controlling and responsible, because he generates his energy and
controls it. No one and nothing else can control it."
-- Rose Wilder Lane: The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle
Against Authority (1943)
So you see Ant, Essentialism doesn't omit the question of how to achieve a
"fulfilled life"; it just transfers the responsibility for this goal from
external authority to the individual self.
Ant continues:
Moreover, I’ve just read your “Values in the Balance” blog and had
another look at the first chapter of your Essentialism essay (“The
Mechanical Garden”) and I think the primary difficulty you’re going to
have presenting any ideas here is that you’re still in an SOM prison
while most contributors here escaped it or are well on their way in
doing so. I'm afraid no-one in their right mind wants to return to
jail (even a metaphysical one) if they can avoid it.
For instance, in the “Mechanical Garden” the question of “Does
consciousness exist?” arises. Now this is the type of question (like the
> one “Does God exist?”) that is Un-asked in the MOQ.
Both questions are symptoms of why SOM gets it so wrong and why it
leads to thousands of philosophical platypi (as Pirsig illustrates in
chapter 8 of LILA). The MOQ therefore regards Richard Dawkins and
Fundamentalist Christians as metaphysically the same; both parties
have (or at least think they have) answers to a question built on
inadequate metaphysical foundations; philosophical quicksand which
has already trapped too many thinkers for too long.
I’d therefore strongly recommend that you re-read Chapter 8 in LILA a
couple of times. If you can get your head round this chapter and my last
> two paragraphs here, you’ll probably have something of value to
contribute here. Since Platt got his ban at Discuss; there has been the
vacancy of “MOQ Republican” here… but there just isn’t one for an
“SOMist Republican” (or SOMist democrat, for that matter), I’m
afraid!
I welcome your advice, Ant, and I will reread Chpt. 8 of LILA. However, I
also realize that RMP had no use for metaphysics--he as much as admitted
this in his novel. Moreover, subject/object existence is not a metaphysics
but the experiential reality we all know.
As for the current lack of a conservative voice in this forum, I think it's
a sign of the times that we have lost our values in an age of nihilism.
Like dumb animals in a wilderness of confusion, we herd together in the
delusion that the collective society offers wiser guidance than Socrates'
admonition: "Know thyself ...the unexamined life is not worth living."
The path to recovery is not more government and blind obedience, but belief
in the meaning of life and the courage of our convictions. Values will
always drive the course of history. Man's challenge is to rediscover his
value sensibility and blaze a new course toward an authentic society.
If we act rationally, instead of politically, we can do this without
inciting a revolution.
Thanks for your support, Ant, as tentative as it now appears.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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