[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA --


> This whole paradigm (the method, theory, the whole
> scheme as you said) has scientists persuaded that their
> worldview is the concrete physical reality, that is until
> another theory comes along.  The method is what Kuhn
> was arguing, which in turn leads to a Kuhn perspective
> about how theories come about.  Some philosophers of
> science (such as Kuhn) have tried to put forth and
> explain that scientists actually use another method to
> conclude certain theories.  This method would include
> experimentation, deduction, induction, and also
> thought or social pressures (which would not be
> logical positivism).  Paradigm according to Kuhn is a
> worldview and that worldview includes a method.

The paradigm of scientific reasoning.  OK, I guess I see where Kuhn is
coming from.  He's sort of philosophologizing about the evolution of
scientific progress.  I'm sure that scientists are sometimes driven to
particular research projects for personal reasons, by persuasion of others,
or out of plain old curiosity.  And everbody has some kind of world view
(weltenshauung).  But that doesn't change the fact that experimental results
must be replicable and subject to confirmation.

Anyway, I have no particular interest in challenging the scientific method,
nor should philosophy be regarded as a competition with science.  Each
discipline has its own area of investigation and a methodology to go with
it.

> Actually I have a degree in Anthropology and I am
> a certified Massage Therapist that has taken a year or
> two in the past in order to focus on camping,
> backpacking, fishing, hunting, gardening and just
> being in the woods doing sitting meditation and
> walking.

I don't know how one gets from Anthropology to Massage Therapy, but with an
anthropological background you should have an advantage in understanding
Pirsig.  He studied the subject, talks about prominent anthropologists, and
frequently discusses philosophical and moral issues from an anthropological
perspective.

> Ham I also had another question about your thesis
> which was as follows:  Intellect knows the edge of
> reality and we only intellectually know this edge of
> reality, meanwhile the essence of this edged reality
> is not known by intellect because intellect cannot
> know essence?  Is that what you are saying?

What do you consider the edge of reality?  Do you mean the finite boundaries
of the physical universe?  Inasmuch as astrophysicists still can't agree on
whether the universe is finite or infinite, I wouldn't say that we
"intellectually know the edge of reality".

This isn't exactly what I meant by "Essence is incomprehensible from the
finite perspective," if that's the statement you're referring to.  (When you
read my section on Nothingness you'll get a better picture.)  There is
simply no way that a sentient organism whose reality is a diversity of
objects arranged in time and space around him can conceive of absolute
Oneness.  I think Cusa came as close to realizing this as anyone since his
time.  He knew it couldn't be expressed in a definition, and that it
certainly was incapable of description.  So he made it a logical
proposition: his "first principle" (Essence) is the coincidence of all
opposition.  It is the only entity that is "not-other" to everything else.
That enabled Essence to be understood (intellectually) as the
all-encompassing source, without having to know its attributes and without
presuming that it was a "thing" or Being.

What we can't define or describe can sometimes be stated as a logical
premise.  Quantum Physics, String Theory, and even Einstein's relativity
have been expressed in equations, which are another form of logical
proposition.

(From your most recent post):

> I think you might explain more what you mean by
> nothingness, but your introduction to it when you were
> using circles as an example I am wondering about that.
> You said:  "Geometrically, of course, the diameter
> has no dimensions-it is a nothingness. Yet its
> "presence" creates something new and different: a pair
> of semicircles."  Diameter has no dimensions?  I
> thought it was a line.  How is it nothingness?

You may consider a line as a single dimension (length), but there is no line
in nature that is without width.  In Geometry, the hypothetical line that
transects the circle to form its axis is non-dimensional.  My figure simply
illustrates the imaginary (intellectual) "dividing line" that makes the
difference between a whole circle and two half-circles.  I try to make the
point that everything in experience is separated from everything else by
nothingness, and that this nothingness does not exist in reality but
originates with us.  We are the "negates" in a world of physical beingness.
What we're really looking at, of course, is Essence; but we're seeing it as
the differentiated "object" of our experience -- again, the illusion of
existence.

Does this make it any clearer?

Best regards,
Ham