[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Ham had said]
This is the purpose of philosophical inquiry, which can incorporate the
spiritual values of mankind -- as religion does -- but without the mythos and
dogma that have been handed down as the "Will of the Almighty" since the dawn
of civilization.

[Mike replied]
I agree with this (although I wouldn't be so hard on mythos: myths and stories
can be of great value when not taken literally - but this is a minor quibble).

[Arlo jumps in]
I missed this, but feel obliged to jump in.

One can't escape the "mythos", to think one can is (as Pirsig says) not to
understand what the mythos is. The mythos is the sum total of a cultural belief
system, whether arranged around "Odin" or "Essence" or "Quality" makes no
difference. The mythos is the analogy by which we describe experience.

Ham's thesis, Pirsig's MOQ, are both part of the mythos, the more they are
understood and accepted, the more a part of the mythos they are. The only thing
"outside of" the mythos is insanity, the regenerative and destructive DQ by
which the mythos evolves.

We tend to use the word "myth" as a way of saying "quaint old beliefs", but our
beliefs are every much "myth" as those of the Vikings, the aboriginies, the
Sioux, and the Jomon. 

Pirsig, in ZMM, "What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with
each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but
still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells
are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can
accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the
mythos is."

And, "Now it comes! Because Quality is the generator of the mythos. That’s it.
That’s what he meant when he said, "Quality is the continuing stimulus which
causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of
it." Religion isn’t invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent
responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what
they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and
then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you’ve got to
work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know.
It’s an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can’t be anything
else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The
mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the
collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it.
The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to
either side...that is the terra incognita of the insane."

Also, "But the mythos goes on, and that which destroys the old mythos becomes
the new mythos..."

Finally, "[Such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and
substance] are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to
us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as
much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced."

That last sentence is key. "Quality", "Essence", whatever analogy you use to
describe "experience, life, reality, stuff, whatever" is always that, an
analogy, an artistic creation, and part of the mythos, not separate.

Arlo