[MD] Art of Value

[Hamilton Priday]

Greetings Akshay, and Hello Dan --

I've just had some off-line conversation with Case, who has expressed 
concern about my temporary absence  due to a computer crash.  (He's proved 
to be a true gentleman after all!)  Well, I'm still here, and I couldn't 
resist commenting on how pathetic is this idea of "leaving a legacy" as the 
only hope of human transcendence.

Akshay wrote:
> There's an interesting Chinese proverb saying that the way a person lives
> after death is by his legacy. The MoQ proves this so brilliantly. The
> legacy is [what] a person's static patterns leave over other patterns 
> [and]
> are the way those static patterns survive. Within, say, social patterns,
> I believe there are types of sub-patterns. There are patterns for envy,
> for affection, for flattering, et cetera.

Surely a philosophy founded on value should suggest a plausible connection 
of the individual to "the primary source of empirical reality."  Are we to 
assume that we "live after death in the 'static patterns' we leave to our 
survivors?"   If this is our link to reality, of what value is it to us OR 
our survivors?   I see the deficiency of the MoQ as its failure to make this 
connection.  We mortals are swept along in the wave of DQ, but in the end it 
is the wave -- not us -- that prevails.  So where is the morality in this 
scenario, and what is the point of cognizant existence?  Without that, 
"evolving to betterness" has no essential meaning.

[Akshay]:
> By the way, the phrase "life after death" is a contradiction speaking
> strictly logically.

[Dan]:
> Yes it is. I believe the question was: does consciousness survive the 
> death
> of the brain. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet identified what
> consciousness is or where (or if) it is located in the brain. Does the 
> brain
> act as a kind of antenna for consciousness? No one knows. If the brain is
> indeed the seat of consciousness then when the brain dies, so does
> consciousness. But if the brain acts as an antenna, then perhaps
> consciousness survives in some fashion that we as living beings are unable
> to comprehend. It is I suppose a mystery that only the dead share.

My answer would be that the brain functions as the "instrument" of conscious 
awareness.  What we experience is filtered by the brain and nervous system 
so that our value-sensibility is limited to a differentiated perspective of 
objective otherness.  This orients the finite creature to its finite world, 
a useful and necessary orientation for co-existence with Nature.  It's also 
what undiscerning people call "the real world."  But to equate the 
cause-and-effect dynamics of finite objects with ultimate reality is 
intellectually naive.

If Quality (or Value) is the source of finitude, as Pirsig seems to be 
saying, isn't it more plausible that this source is "uncreated" and 
absolute?  Isn't it more logical that the multiplistic "patterns of quality" 
that we are
attuned to in existence ultimately relate to the Oneness of our Creator?  I 
find it remarkable that the concept of a transcendent source is inimicable 
to postmodern philosophy.  By rejecting a primary source beyond finitude, we 
prevent the kind of workable ontology that could make the MoQ a meaningful 
breakthrough in contemporary Western Philosophy.

I wonder if its author has ever considered the humanistic value of leaving 
such a "legacy", instead of an unresolved enigma.

Essentially yours,
Ham