[MD] dualism redux (to Ron)

[Ham Priday]

Sorry, Ron -- 

I should have known better.  It was Kevin, not you, who said:
> Dualism, from my point of view, is any formal system
> of thought or behavior that approaches reality as if it
> were divided into parts.  Subject/object metaphysics is
> clearly dualistic.  Science and mathematics as well as
> religious and political institutions are dualistic.

Kevin also thanked me for something I never said:
> [I]f a person approaches reality as if it were of separate parts
> or finite (thank you Ham for making this distinction) then they
> are behaving dualistically.

But while we're at it, you asked a rhetorical question that made me wonder
why it hasn't occurred to the Pirsigians ...
> How close is "betterness" to "goodness"?

You would not need to ask that question of me.  An essentialist understands
that values like goodness (and evil), beauty (and grotesqueness), important
(and trivial), are subjectively realized by the individual and are not a
universal principle of the objective world.

Aesthetics and Morality are standards established by a culture to reflect
the values of its members, in the same way that laws are passed in a
democratic society to represent their constituents' concept of justice.
Thus, the answer to such perennial questions as "What is right?" or "What
ought we to do?" is left to man who is the Choicemaker in the universe.  If
it were otherwise, man would have been designed with perfect wisdom.

If you convince yourself that you must have "divine guidance" for these
choices, you'll be looking for some external authority or religious canon to
tell you what's right and wrong.  Of course, that means you surrender your
innate freedom as an authentic individual.  But, then, human beings have
been doing that for thousands of years.

This failure to acknowledge individual freedom is another shortcoming I find
with the MoQ heirarchy of Quality.  When Pirsig relegated Intellect and
Goodness to the cosmic "collective" he effectively eliminated Value from the
proprietary consciousness.  If the universe is a "moral system" programmed
to evolve toward "betterness," then what role does the individual play in
this world?

Just thought I'd throw that in as more food for thought.

Sorry about the confusion.  I'll have to exercise more care with my
references.

Best regards,
Ham