[MD] The difference between a Monet and a finger painting

[Ham Priday]

Hi Mary, quite contrary --


[Ham said]:
> But I was puzzled by what seemed to me an ingenuous comment:
> "If you base your world-view on SOM, then value is just 'whatever
> you like'."  I assume you are the same Mary who ends evey post
> with the axiom "The most important thing you will ever make is a
> realization."  Isn't "what you like" your realization of value?
> Indeed, how can we know value other than as a realization?
> Value-sensibility, as I have defined it, IS primary realization.
> While this may be the SOM view, it also happens to be the
> perspective of human beings living in and interacting with a
> physical world.

You replied:
> Yes, it is me, and I fail to see a conflict with the two ideas.
> The problem I have with SOM is that it presupposes a subject
> and an object.  My point was simply that science (SOM taking
> its highest form) has no conceptual nook in which to put value.
> For a scientist, value is indeed "whatever you like".  It can't be
> objectively measured in scientific terms, so it is discounted.

We all presuppose subjects and objects because it is what we experience. 
It's the structure of the empirical world.  Science, not metaphysics, is the 
best method we have of connecting the dots of this world and discovering how 
it works.  From scientific investigation comes the practical knowledge to 
adapt the world to our needs and make it a more habitable environment. 
Measuring subjective values is not the province of Science.  If it were, 
scientific conclusions would be based on what we "wanted them to be," thus 
losing their predictability and efficacy as pragamatic  tools.

Mary, I, too, am a contrarian.  I understand the importance of Value in 
human life, perhaps even more than Pirsig does.  For me, Value is 
subjective, which means that a subject is required to realize it.  That's 
why Protagoras in 480 BC said that "Man is the measure of all things."  What 
man "measures" and defines are the phenomena known as "objects" and "events" 
in his pluralistic world.  The facts and measurements gleaned from 
experience constitute the body of empirical knowledge.

But then along comes a philosopher/novelist who says that there are no 
subjects or objects, that these are just "patterns of Quality" which is the 
only "true Reality".  This concept appeals to postmodern reductionists who 
like to imagine a monistic universe.  Indeed, the MoQ would be a brilliant 
thesis if quality could stand on its own, independently of man's 
realization, which of course is the central premise of Pirsig's 
metaphysics.  Unfortunately, however, his thesis is flawed.  For, if there 
are no subjects, there is no way Quality or Value can be realized.  The 
author gets around this problem by suggesting that inanimate things also 
"experience value" and are driven to their evolutionary ends by "responding" 
to it.  But if there are no objects, neither are there "things".

The point I've been trying to make is that there are two kinds or "modes" of 
Reality: Existence and Essence.  Existence is the provisional experience of 
cognizant creatures, including human beings, whose "being" is dependent on 
differentiation (i.e., self/otherness).  Essence is the uncreated, 
non-differentiated (absolute) Source of sensible experience.  Metaphysics is 
legitimately concerned with developing hypotheses to explain the origin 
(ontegeny) and relationship (cosmology) of these two realities.  In my 
opinion, SOM and MOQ are simply two somewhat euphemistic perspectives of 
experiential reality.

Thanks, Mary.

--Ham