[MD] Does the MOQ invalidate Subjectivity?

[Ham Priday]

Steve, Arlo, Platt, Michael, Matt --

Back on 9/1/05 Scott Roberts said:

> My own view (which is not generally accepted here) is that
> to speak of value is to speak of consciousness (awareness
> of value). Since, according to the MOQ, there is value at all
> levels, so must there be consciousness at all levels. In other
> words, consciousness did not arise at some point in time,
> and the idea that consciousness is a consequence of the
> nervous system reaching some level of complexity is just
> a materialist error.

Platt replied:
> There's evidence of consciousness (response to value)
> all the way back to the lowly virus. Further, it's known that
> atoms exhibit value responses to their environment. The
> materialist explanation has yet to go beyond the swiss
> cheese phase, i.e. it's full of holes.

Ham said (at some point in this time frame):
> The finite mind cannot comprehend, let alone describe, the
> attributes of a non-relational source.  Moreover, the goal of
> philosophy was never to eliminate subjects and objects from
> reality, but to explain reality as a monism rather than a dichotomy.
> If reality is essentially One(ness), and its manifestation to man
> is subjective, in effect we have a monism.

Arlo on 6/10 said:
> Only when social patterns hit a certain level of sophistication
> were intellectual patterns able to emerge. This is why I'd say
> ant social behavior is too primitive for intellectual patterns to
> emerge from it. Primate social behavior is sophisticated enough,
> I'd make the cautious claim, that very simple intellectual patterns
> have emerged from it. Of course, human social behavior is of
> such a high level of complexity-sophistication, that quite
> sophisticated intellectual patterns have emerged therefrom.

Matt on 6/12 said:
> I think Mill, writing in the 19th century, was making a good
> political response to the emergence of the fourth level (stuff that
> had been going on in the preceding couple of centuries). He
> perhaps did more than anyone to establish its dominance over
> social value, by arguing for social patterns of value that enable
> and encourage the cultivation of individuality and the skill of
> reasoned argument. Individuality is a means to eudaimonia
> (human flourishing). Reasoned argument is a means to truth.
> Truth is already acknowledged as an aspect of Pirsig's 4th level,
> as the label "intellect" shows. Perhaps eudaimonia, Platt's
> gumptious "character", the agent of evolution, is the missing piece.

Arlo (on Social Ants) said on 6/12:
> All those things you mention in the beginning of your post, all things
> that should be honed in on arete, oneness of life, being part of the
> world. When those qualities you mention at the start are guided by an
> understand that "excellence" is THIS... arete, and not wealth, power and
> control of the world, then we are getting somewhere.

Platt responded:
> Always "we" -- the collective -- with Arlo.

Arlo retorted:
> Oh, but Platt. I *am* we. And *you* are we. And we are *they*.
> And we are *all* together... (apologies to Lennon for the lyrical
liberties).
>
> "Part of the world", "a oneness of life"... "not an enemy of it".

I call your attention to the consistency with which you gentlemen reference
the human animal.  All of the above statements (with the exception of Scott
Roberts' and my own) use the objective terms "evidence", "response(s)",
"behavior", "exhibit(s)", "reasoning", "emergence", "eudaemonia", and
"dominance" exclusively to describe him.  And, although Platt saw fit to
change Scott's parenthetical definition of consciousness from "awareness of
value" to "response to value", not once is awareness treated as a subjective
entity.  As followers of a philosophy which espouses that "experience =
reality", do you not find this strange?

Leaving aside the levels and patterns issue, what you are all talking about
is an objective (i.e., collective) phenomenon that is not much different
than, if not identical to, the theories of biological evolution,
conservation of energy, or quantum mechanics.  Perhaps that is the goal
Pirsig had in mind for the MoQ, since he certainly wanted to appease the
logical positivists.  But to speak of consciousness and value only in
"mechanistic" terms, as if human awareness is devoid of subjectivity,
totally misses the proprietary nature of experience on which the MoQ is
founded.

This one-sided ontology not only results in a flawed metaphysical thesis, it
is unconscionable to me that its author would be content to leave his
philosophical legacy in its present form.  Or am I the only one here who
sees the MoQ account of reality as the sound of one hand clapping?

--Ham