From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Dec 09 2004 - 14:45:50 GMT
Dear Ham,
Platt:
> > What you call Essence I call existence which equals Quality.
> > Existence exists, but I can't prove it.
Ham:
> No one is asking you to "prove" existence, and if you want to call
> existence "Quality", fine and dandy. I'll probably trigger a barrage of
> Pirsig quotes, but it seems to me that your equation effectively negates
> everything that's new and significant about the MOQ. We might just as well
> not have a philosophy at all. It's just so much artful poetry about
> existence, with no implicit meaning for mankind.
If you don't think existence (reality) to be immanently and
transcendentally moral, then I guess it has no meaning for you. As you
say, if that's what you think, "fine and dandy."
> I find it incredulous, after all our exchanges about the significance of
> the individual intellect, that existentialism represents your position.
According to Merriam Webster, existentialism means: "a chiefly 20th
century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering
on analysis of individual existence in an unfathonable universe and the
plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for his
acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong
or good or bad." I'm not sure what that lead balloon means, but I assure
you it is NOT my position.
> Furthermore, despite the metaphorical expressions used as substitutes
> for a
> formal thesis (i.e., Quality = Everything), I doubt that Mr. Pirsig would
> find the notion that Existence equals Quality metaphysically acceptable.
> If there is nothing more, where does that leave his Morality, his patterns
> of Value, his evolution to Betterness? Where is the Beauty that you so
> revere as Truth? Indeed, where is Dynamic Quality? Are they all to be
> dismissed as byproducts of existence?
Quality IS morality in Pirsig's metaphysics.
> > (As for the Big Bang, something had
> > to exist to go "bang." Cosmologists call it a singularity.)
>
> Call it what you like, but it means Creation. Existence had a prior
> source: it was created. Is there any escaping this?
Is there any escaping that Essence had a prior source? Or are you saying
Essence doesn't exist?
> We do not know if it
> is infinitely boundless or if it is even infinite in space. We do know on
> best authority that it had a beginning, however, and is therefore not
> absolute.
Things that have beginnings and ends are ipso facto NOT absolute. Or, to
reverse it is, things that have NO beginnings and ends ARE absolute. Is
that your position? If so, your position must have an end or else it
qualifies as an absolute.
> As you see, we go around in circles!
> Essentially still trying,
Keep trying, Ham. You never know when you might crack this thick skull of
mine so that I may be enlightened..
Best,
Platt
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