From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon May 02 2005 - 13:38:57 BST
Hi Ham,
> As I see it, you're all trying to define your personal metaphysical
> perspective in terms of the MoQ which is ambiguous on the issue of ultimate
> reality. The very use of Quality as the primary reality makes the
> ontology ambiguous. Quality, like Goodness, Beauty and Truth, is a
> valuistic judgment of something experienced; any attempt to rationalize it
> as non-SOM is based on the premise that Quality exists independently of
> conscious sensibility. It is that premise by which Mr. Pirsig has
> purportedly eliminated Cartesian dualism. One may accept the concept of a
> universal Quality on "faith", but it doesn't pass muster as a credible
> thesis.
You have misinterpreted Pirsig's premise. He doesn't say Quality exists
independently of conscious sensibility. He says Quality is experience,
meaning that valuistic judgment are intrinsic to experience, i.e. values
are not something separate from conscious sensibility as you suggest.
At least one materialist, Richard C. Vitzthum agrees with Pirsig: He said:
"Furthermore, the reductionist equates moral discrimination with sense
discrimination. That is, the ability to sense a difference between heart
and cold, light and dark, acid and alkaline is indistinguishable from the
ability to decide whether this thing or place or experience is better or
worse than that thing, place of experience. Physical sensing and moral
judgment have from the start been simultaneous and identical processes,
and even the most refined and abstruse moral reasoning is rooted in the
slime and grit of the earth's natural history."
So for me and some others, Pirsig's thesis is highly credible, or, to use
his vernacular, "a high quality intellectual pattern."
Best,
Platt
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