[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?]

[Ham Priday]

[Arlo, when asked: What is ultimately real for you?]:

> All of these things, and God, Buddha, the Tao, Brahman,
> and Quality. And Essence. All of things are metaphorical
> representations of what is ultimately beyond expression.
> I find the Quality metaphor most appealing, on an intuitive
> and also pragmatic level.

In other words, everything you know, experience, or have heard about is a
metaphor for an ineffable "something".  You can't define it, of course; but
you surely must have some conception of what it is.  Even idealists like
Socrates and Plato thought of ultimate reality as Being.  Would you reject
their view?

This is a cardinal question, because if you accept the experienced world as
reality, then your philosophy is that of scientific objectivism.  If you
don't, then you build your ontology on something else.  I happen to think
Quality, as euphemized by Pirsig, suggests something different, and
apparently so do others here; otherwise, why have an MoQ forum?  My
conception of Essence isn't Beingness, for example, and although I can't
precisely define it, I can give you a pretty good idea of what it is, what
it is not, and how I think it relates to the relational world -- even though
I resort to metaphor and analogy to do so.

Why are the Pirsigians so fearful of identifying their fundamental reality?
The 15th century theologian Nicholas of Cusa couldn't define God, either;
yet he theorized that it was the "not other" that was unopposed to any
derived (i.e., experienced) other, thereby giving philosophers a handle on
the ineffable source.  It seems to me that if you believe in something
enough to almost taste it -- feel it -- it can be expressed in words.  Love
and Value may be indefinable, but they're obviously expressible, judging
from the volumes of words that have been written about them.

[Ham]:
> Do you accept my view that Value (Quality) is subjective?
> (Give it some thought before you answer.)

[Arlo]
> Why do you ask this, Ham? You know full well my reply
> is going to be that Quality comes before objects and subjects.

Then your Quality is not the sense of Value which presupposes subjective
awareness.  I ask to learn.  When I've asked others here to explain the
difference between these terms, they've indicated there was fundamentally no
difference in the MoQ thesis.  If you agree, how do you account for the
existence of an aesthetic standard, or a relative measure of worth, in the
absence of a subject to appreciate or measure it?

Cusa's First Principle was that which "cannot be other, either than an other
or than nothing, and likewise is not opposed to anything."

What is yours?

If you believe this is an unfair question, tell me why.

Thanks, Arlo.

-- Ham