[MD] The MOQ Conundrum

[Ham Priday]

On 1/18/10 at 7:47 AM, Platt Holden asked:


> Hi All:
>
> How do we deal with this MOQ conundrum?
>
> Experience arises from a reality created by experience.
>
> One answer. "Ignore it. Perhaps it will go away."

MoQ has more than one problem with its equivalency theory: 
Quality=Experience=Reality.  It's a simplistic paradigm that not only defies 
common sense but contradicts what we've learned about the acquisition of 
knowledge (epistemology).

If Pirsig's assertion that "Experience is the cutting edge of Reality" was 
meant to infer that Experience literally creates Reality, then the created 
Reality (existence) and the Quality that follows from it are two 
non-identical things.  This of course refutes your Quality Principle: "It 
created and gave purpose to our world, motivated by the ethical principle of 
the Good, which is its essence."

(I won't address the qualifying phrase "motivated by the ...Good which is 
its essence," because I don't believe Quality is motivated by either 
goodness or morality but is a subjective measure on a scale of relative 
values from good to bad.)

However, it is still possible to salvage the identity of Experience and 
Realty -- IF the Reality we're talking about it is empirical Existence. 
This, in fact, is what my epistemology does.  It posits experience as an 
active subjective process, rather than a passive receptor of objective 
sensibilia.  That process is the objectification of sensible Value into 
discrete entities that represent our being-in-the-world -- in other words, 
our individual "value constructs".  With this ontology we can equate 
Experience to existential Reality, as well as (for what it's worth) 
preserving Pirsig's other equivalency: Quality=Value.

Does this solve your conundrum, Platt?

Essentially speaking,
Ham