[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt --


> As I predicted I began to cheer I read your essay.
> But then I ran into a problem. And it's only Sunday.
> [snip]
> (I couldn't help but notice your frequent references
> to values which, of course, is Pirsig's whole shtick.)
>
> But then after cheering the first 400 or so words of
> your essay, I was taken up short by this statement:
>
> "While man is delivered into this world meticulously
> packaged and fully equipped for life, no instructions
> are included."
>
> Fully equipped for life? I don't think so. Unlike his
> animal brethren, he must acquire knowledge to survive.
> He is not equipped with tooth and claw and the instinct
> to use them properly.  He is born naked and without
> weapons except for his mind which he can choose to
> use or not. Instinct will not help him to know that a
> spear is a better tool to hunt with than his bare hands,
> or that a wheel and axel can help to carry a heavy load.
> "Fully equipped" suggests to me that man has all the
> know-how he needs to live. I say not so.

I think my statement makes the point that, unlike animals that survive by
virtue of their natural instincts, Man has no such pre-packaged program.
His choice-making slate is a tabula raza; that is, he is created as a
self-determinate creature with the necessity to make his own choices and be
held accountable for them.  Perhaps to you "fully equipped for life" implies
that the infant is born ready to erect skyscrapers and fight on the
battlefield; I doubt that the average reader would draw such an illogical
conclusion.

> In any case, from that point on you get into your essentialist
> philosophy which I have yet to comprehend, due no doubt to
> my lack of ability to grasp the concept of "negation" and the
> meaning of such sentences as:
> "As an incremental negate of the Absolute Source,
> the individual cannot exist beyond the conditions of finitude.
> Instead, having rounded the negate cycle, the individuated
> self surrenders its 'I'-ness--conditional being and
> existential awareness--completely to otherness, thereby
> revoking its negated status and reclaiming its Essence-Value."
>
> Is there a plain English version that would drop such
> words and phrases as "finitude," "negate cycle," "individuated self,"
> "existential awareness" and "negated status?"

I wanted to bring these terms into the Freedom concept because I had used
them elsewhere in the thesis.

"Finitude" is finitely-limited (space/time) existence.  The 'negate cycle"
refers to the observed transition from Essence-in-itself, to Essence
experienced differentially as the value of beingness, and back to Essence
again.  This cycle is illusory -- i.e., experienced only by the finite
creature, since Essence is by definition absolute and immutable.  "Negate"
is a term I've borrowed from Sartre to identify the non-physical
(non-empirical) "self", the subject of existence.

What you see as a "mystery" is the contradictory word meanings required to
express the concept.  For example, the "operative element" in this
hypothesis is nothingness; and that's uncommon.  We're not accustomed to
envisioning nothingness DOING something, such as creating; but it's the only
way one can express this concept.  We are created as 'nothings'.
Metaphysically, the individual "self" or negate does not exist; it has that
in common with Essence.  (Neither is an existent.)  But since life "takes
place" in existence, we individually sense Essence as finite or conditional
values.  These are the values negated to create us.  We each build up a
life's supply of Value-complement, as it were, which reconstitutes our
"vested share" in Essence.  But every individual's value-compliment is
unique from any other's in the same way that every person's subjective
reality is unique.  Since Essence is the absolute Not-other, these
differences are only the conditional manifestation of Essence caused by its
negation of nothingness.  Hence, the illusion of existence.

> Does this mean I'd be better off dead?

Not unless life has no value for you; and I think I know you well enough to
realize that it has great value for you.   The purpose of life is to use
your autonomy to fully realize that value.

Thanks for taking the trouble to re-read this part of my thesis, even though
some of it seems incomprehensible.  The problem is that one has to posit
metaphysical theories using words that generally connote only physical
things.  I suspect that your confusion will begin to disappear as the
concept begins to emerge in your understanding.  Once that happens, you will
probably find a way to articulate it much better than I have.  I'd love to
see this happen; but for the present, at least, I'm afraid Pirsig's somewhat
simpler theory has filled that void in your understanding, and you see
nothing to be gained by exploring other approaches.

Nevertheless, I remain

Essentially yours,
Ham