[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

Platt --


> By "fixed" I meant like a fixed theory of change such as
> the theory of evolution. Morality is fixed, but change for the
> better is part of its meaning. Morality is not static. Some of
> what was considered good by the Elizabethans is not
> considered good today, like bear baiting.
> [snip]
> The principle doesn't define the "optimum goodness."
> It simply suggests infinite improvement which cannot be
> intellectually defined but is felt on the pulses.

I don't understand a "fixed theory of change".  Is the theory the principle,
and moral evolution the change?   Is it like saying "nothing is as constant
as change"?   If this is a Pirsigian idea, it is a concept stuck in the
space/time dimensions of finite existence.  And maybe this evolutionary
premise is my problem with the MoQ -- it never transcends finitude.

Let me try to infuse your personal belief system into this second-hand
philosophy.  You've indicated your belief in a Creator, or at least in a
first principle or source.  Do you not also believe that such a source is
absolute and beyond time and space?  If you answer in the affirmative, then
that source is your "infinite state of being" or whatever else you want to
call it, except "dynamic" or "evolutionary".  Those terms apply only to the
differentiated realm of existence.

There's a discussion going on between Scott and Ian in which Scott has, I
think, nailed down Pirsig's metaphysical predicament.

[Scott]:
> Anyway, my model differs from yours in that I do not
> propose <no-thing> or <difference> as two. That is, I
> consider them a contradictory identity, by which and from
> which there is needed a third term (such as consciousness,
> value, or intellect). This was hinted at in ZMM, when Phaedrus
> first said that Quality was "between" subject and object.
> But he later changed this to being "prior" to S and O.
> In this I think he took a wrong step. Shifting from S and O
> to a more generic contradictory identity, like <no-thing> and
> <difference>, my model says that Quality causes/is caused by
> CI. Which is to say that my logic is inherently trinitarian.

The reason Pirsig (aka Phaedrus) vacillated from the "between" to the
"prior" in his theory was because he didn't want to acknowledge a source
that was the "beyond" space/time existence.  In other words, he was afraid
of the theistic identification.  So as to avoid any suggestion that Quality
might be a supernatural source, he made it "dynamic", while making the
differentiated world of experience "static".  When you think about it, you
realize it's actually the reverse.  All of existence, including awareness,
is in transition -- is there any question but that it is dynamic?   But
Pirsig does a sleight-of-hand and transfers all the dynamic elements of
human experience -- Intellect, Consciousness, Morality, Value, and
"evolution to betterness" -- to a "collectively accessible" realm of his own
invention and calls it Dynamic Quality.

It isn't my intention to disparage Pirsig's thesis; it's really very clever
word-play without a solid metaphysical foundation.  It never reaches the
Grand Finale because he's rejected the Creator that makes it all both
possible and meaningful.  Instead of some hope for transcendence, the author
leaves us a cosmos without a progenitor, mankind without a soul, value
without sensibility, morality without humanity.  This I think is the
fundamental difference between Essentialism and the MoQ.

> I think you make my point about evolution towards
> betterness, suggesting that today's values are an improvement
> over yesterday's and that a return to those earlier values
> would be a "regression." Thus, if such regression were a
> result of an attitude of "anything goes," as indeed it might,
> you would judge it a negative result of human behavior.
> That's why I think "anything goes" presents a problem.

It presents a problem for you, because you can't accept that fact that
morality ranges from bad to good.  Pirsig's morality may be fixed in
"betterness", but real world has both negative and positive aspects.  We
experience death and birth, sickness and health, sadness and joy, slavery
and freedom, destruction and creation, war and peace.  Biological evolution
itself is a trial-by-error process.  We can't deny that the locus of our
existence is the crossroad between better and worse.

> Man can choose to expand his connection with consciousness
> or not. Most men choose not to. But many do, through scientific
> inquiry and art. That was the whole point of Pirsig's final words
> in his SODV paper. "What I saw here were two artists in the
> throes of creative discovery. They were at the cutting edge of
> knowledge plunging into the unknown trying to bring something
> out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
> everyone. As Bohr might have loved to observe, science and
> art are just two different complementary ways of looking at the
> same thing." You Ham are one of those artists. :-)

Thank you placing me in such esteemed company, but your flattery does not
hide the Pirsigian fallacy of your opening premise.  "Man can choose to
expand his CONNECTION with consciousness"?  I (also) don't want to beat a
dead horse -- and I can swear we beat this one to death some months ago.
Where in hell is this "consciousness" that we CONNECT TO?
Please don't tell me we're back to the "collective" again!  We don't
"connect to" consciousness, Platt; we ARE conscious entities.  We don't
"connect to" Value, either; we "create" it -- bring it into realization -- 
though our experience of otherness.  The same holds for Intellect.  I'm
sorry to see that you're still brainwashed by the collectivists here.

> If freedom is innate in man, how come some cultures don't recognize it?

Inasmuch as cultures are made up of individuals, I start with the latter.
Kindly go to my website are re-read the section on Freedom:
www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm#Freedom

In this essay I offer a rationale for Freedom which explains why its
realization isn't instinctive to man.  I show that for man to be fully
autonomous, he must be denied access to essential truths which would
influence him in his value choices; and the autonomy of individual freedom
is most definitely one of these truths.  This principle is part of the Grand
Design.  When you put it all together, you see that the freedom to choose is
man's purpose in life.  The values he chooses are the values negated in his
creation; they are refreshed and restored by his life experience, and,
having come full circle, they are reabsorbed into Essence which, as Eckhart
taught and Cusa theorized, is "absolute fullness that admits of no other
than itself".

Have a meaningful read.

Essentially yours,
Ham