[MD] Essentialism and the MOQ

[David M]

Hi Ham



>
> While all of the above may be regarded as proprietary to the individual,
> only phenomena in the "objective" category have universal correspondence,
> that is, refer to phenomena that can be empirically corroborated.
> Sensibility is the individual's pre-intellectual response to Value as
> differentiated by organic sensibility and consciously perceived as one's
> "state of mind" relative to the particular phenomenon experienced.

DM: Sounds like a distinction between primary and secondary properties,
which is far from undisputed. Sounds like the difference between MOQ and
your ideaof experience is that you take SOM as a valid ontology.


>
> One's propensity toward value is to some extent pre-determined, for
> metaphysical reasons I won't get into here, except to say that sensibility
> to value is as unique for each person as one's identity is to another's.
> There is no correspondence between my values and yours beyond what I can
> verbally communicate to you.

DM: Do individual human beings have nothing in common then?

 For example, I might be enraptured by the
> beauty of a woman you find quite ordinary, or moved to tears by a Brahms
> symphony that you'd prefer not to hear.

DM: Equally we may share these valuations.

Your greater exposure to Pirsig's
> writings may have convinced you that the MOQ is the most inspired 
> philosophy
> ever conceived, while I may find it devoid of meaning.  Although these
> examples illustrate personal preferences, value choices encompass a host 
> of
> conditions and propensities for which each individual is his own 
> appraiser.

DM: Surely we can work out what we agree about and what we don't and
probably also why?

>
> Inasmuch as none of us has direct access to another's value-sense, the
> implications of what the "experience" of value signifies relative to the
> entire population of mankind may be infinitely variable.

DM: If we were unable to express these differences we would not know
they existed, so whre's the problem?

>
> I don't know if I've answered your question, David, since Value is treated
> in the MoQ as a universal principle rather than as the individual
> perspective of reality.

DM: It is a universal of experience yes.

 Also Pirsig seems to have included sensible
> awareness, consciousness, intellection, intuition, morality, and esthetic
> judgment all under the single term "experience".

DM: Yes, why not?