[MD] Ham unlike you I will not crreate false idols

[Ham Priday]

Platt --

I don't know why you want to make my life difficult, but it seems you feel
the need to challenge everything I say.

> I thought you said that morality was based on aesthetic sensibilities.
> Now it's an intellectual judgment. So is it one, or the other, or both?
> If it's intellectual, what are its premises?

We can make intellectual judgments about our feelings, can't we?  How do you
judge Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto as a better work than, say,
Prokofiev's 1st (which I happen to think is a masterpiece)?

[Ham]:
> If the wolf seizing and devouring the goat is not wrong
> by your universal principle ('might makes right'),
> then neither was Hitler or Pol Pot.

[Platt]:
> "My" universal principle of might makes right? When did I
> espouse that as my universal moral principle?

On 12/23 Platt said:
> Animals compete under the biological level morality of "might
> makes right," also known as the "Law of the Jungle."

[Platt]:
> What is the difference between the scientific way of establishing truth
> and the "objective validation" way?

Scientific methodology is objective.  What is truth to the scientific
community is what has been universally established by objective evidence.
There is no objective evidence for metaphysical theories, which is why they
remain hypotheses.

[Ham, previously]:
> You're right: Essence will never by scientifically verified.  But then,
> neither will your proprietary awareness, your joys and sorrows, your
> passions and aspirations, your disdain for injustice.

[Again, Platt]:
> Nor can  those things be verified by your "objective validation" unless
> you know of a method of reading minds. Either that or I don't understand
> "objective validation."

Okay, hold your fire.  I see the problem.  It stems from a misconception of
my answer to this
question:

[Platt, previously]:
> You seem to say on one hand that only science can be called upon to
> establish truth. On the other hand you ask us to believe in an Essence
> which science cannot verify. What gives?

[Ham]:
> Not Science per se, but objective validation that is universally
> acknowledged.

My answer was addressed to your first statement only.  I didn't bother to
answer the "What gives?" because I thought your assertion that science can't
verify Essence was a throw-away line.  Of course Essence can't be verified
scientifically; neither can Quality.  But I presumed that was understood.

Therefore the next two challenges -- How can any of that be measured
in the laboratory and verified? When did Pirsig say that Quality was not
capable of empirical validation? -- are accessories after the fact.

I know that Pirsig has stated somewhere that Quality can't be defined but
haven't yet found the source.  I was able to locate these two
quotations, however:

"The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid distinctions
between the false and the true in nature, to eliminate the subjective,
unreal, imaginary elements from one's work so as to obtain an objective,
true, picture of reality. When he said Quality was subjective, to them he
was just saying Quality is imaginary and could therefore be disregarded in
any serious consideration of
          -- ZMM

"My problem with "essence", is not that it isn't there or that it is not the
same as Quality.  It is that positivists usually deny "essence" as something
like "God" or "the absolute" and dismiss it experimentally unverifiable,
which is to say they think you are some kind of religious nut. The advantage
of Quality is that it cannot be dismissed as unverifiable without falling
into absurdity.
          -- RP to HP

(Note that he didn't say Quality COULD be verified positively, only that it
"could not be dismissed" as unverifiable.)

[Ham, previously]:
> An amoeba, like a leukocyte or blade of grass, reacts to external
> stimuli. This is not "knowledge" or awareness, Platt.

[Platt]:
> How do you know? Can you "objectively validate" that a
> blade of grass has no awareness?

I myself can't; but since it has no central nervous system (primary
objective requisite for consciousness) I'm quite certain a biologist would
validate this fact for you.

[Platt]:
> I wish you'd convince Hamas of the "full autonomy of individual
> Freedom."

[Ham]:
> > Hamas has dramatically demonstrated its knowledge of this fact.

[Platt]:
> How so? By pledging to kill Jews?

Not only by "pledging to kill Jews" but, as the major terrorist organization
in Palestine, demanding that Israel be destroyed, and murdering hundreds of
innocent Israelis to prove it.  That's taking advantage of the autonomy of
freedom in my book!

Relatively yours,
Ham