[MD] The Quality of Freedom

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt and All --


> Hi Ham,
>
> I would respectfully suggest that so long as you think of morality
> as confined to humans and human social patterns you will never
> grasp the significance of Pirsig's metaphysics. What he has done
> is extend the idea of morality to all behavior including the behavior
> of atoms, viruses, bugs, plants and animals. ...
>
> Many of us are convinced that Pirsig's bold move has resulted in
> a better description of reality than has heretofore been offered by
> any philosophy. In Lila he shows why he and we believe this to be so.

I think of morality as the human being's response to value.  There is no way 
a human can judge the "morality" of an ineffable Creator other than as a 
magnanimous being, which Essence is not.  I can understand the concept of 
morality extended to insentient beings as a romantic paradigm for evolution 
and observed behavior.  But Pirsig also said "experience is the cutting edge 
of reality."

Have you ever considered the possibility that man delineates or "carves out" 
of objective otherness a physical representation of his value-sensibility, 
so that the goals of experiential reality express his moral and intellectual 
values?   When we say that "the universe is intelligently designed," by 
whose intelligence is the design measured?  Since man is the measure of all 
things, it is he whose esthetic sensibility objectivizes "designs" and who 
pronounces them "intelligent", "beautiful", or "moral".  What I'm suggesting 
is that Essential Value not only provides the "substantive nature" of the 
objects in man's experiential reality, it choreographs their behavior as 
well.

I am not doubting the "boldness" or beauty of Pirsig's paradigm, only the 
logic of it.  There is no morality in a universe that exists and "evolves to 
betterness" for its own sake.  I stand by my statement that imputing 
morality to either the Creator or the created world denies man the freedom 
to realize value and make it the foundation for his own morality.  As 
arguably one of the last holdouts for an anthropocentric universe, I believe 
this to be the meaning and purpose of human existence.

Warmest regards,
Ham

On 6 Dec 2009 at 1:39, Ham Priday wrote:

>> John, Joe, Mark and All --
>>
>> I wasn't able to locate the post in which Joe insisted that man couldn't 
>> be
>> moral unless morality were an intrinsic law of the universe, like 
>> gravity,
>> imposed on him.  But when I tried to make the point that man "invents"
>> morality, rather than the other way around, John jumped in to take issue
>> with me:
>>
>> [John, on 12/1]:
>> > But that point is the point with which I disagree.  It makes more sense
>> > that the moral structure of the cosmos produces man, who retains
>> > recognition in his being of this intrinsic morality. ...
>> >
>> > The distinction is between morality and freedom.  You say you couldn't
>> > have freedom if there was intrinsic morality and I say you couldn't 
>> > have
>> > freedom UNLESS there was intrinsic morality.
>>
>> There is a gross misunderstanding of Freedom here, and it stems from
>> Pirsig's theory of "universal" Quality (DQ) that would deny existence a
>> cognitive value agent.  In my opinion, this distorts not only the concept 
>> of
>> human freedom but the Quality (Value) sensibility that supports it.  Such 
>> a
>> worldview essentially eliminates the moral autonomy of man whose role as
>> choice-maker is the very core of morality.  And the blame for this
>> prevarication falls squarely on the shoulders of MoQ's author.
>>
>> Since the Freedom issue is central to philosophy in general, yet 
>> conspicuous
>> by its absence in the MoQ specifically, I decided it warranted a thread 
>> of
>> its own.
>>
>> In 'The Discovery of Freedom', published over half a century ago, Rose
>> Wilder Lane writes:
>> "Very few men have ever known that men are free.  Among this earth's
>> population now, few know that fact.  For six thousand years at least, a
>> majority has generally believed in pagan gods. ... The pagan view of the
>> universe is that it is static, motionless, limited, and controlled by an
>> Authority ...that all individuals are, and by their nature should and 
>> must
>> be, controlled by some Authority outside themselves.  ...[But] a time
>> comes when every normal man is a responsible human being.  His energy
>> creates a part of the whole human world of his time.  He is free; he is
>> self-controlling and responsible, because he generates his energy and
>> controls it.
>> No one and nothing else can control it."
>>
>> The MoQ thesis does not endorse this view.  Instead it promulgates the
>> notion that man evolves through biological and social levels in order to
>> "intellectualize" goodness as something in Nature to which he must 
>> "attach"
>> himself.  But if this were true, the virtues of mankind -- compassion,
>> generosity, honesty, honor -- would have to be culled or extracted from
>> the universal "DQ bank".  Pirsigians look upon these values as "behavior
>> patterns" observed in enlightened people and advanced societies, rather
>> than responses to proprietary sensibility.
>>
>> I have repeatedly argued that if the universe were intrinsically moral, 
>> the
>> issue of Morality would never even arise.  All living creatures would
>> automatically behave as programmed by Nature's Goodness.  But the
>> universe is patently not moral, as the "law of the jungle" demonstrates,
>> and no amount of intellect is going to moralize evolution.  That's 
>> because
>> morality doesn't come from the universe.  Only human beings have the
>> value sensibility to establish a moral code and the reasoning ability to
>> live by it.
>>
>> If we could view the universe as "intelligently designed" (which doesn't
>> require theism), we would see that man is individuated from the objective
>> world of his experience so that he may independently assess its value,
>> thereby gaining an "external perspective" of the primary source 
>> "unbiased"
>> by absolute knowledge.  This perspective "colors" the being of existence 
>> to
>> reflect the individual's sensibilities as well as the aspirations of his 
>> culture.
>> And, precisely because he is not a robot of Nature programmed to
>> follow a prescribed course, he is free to exercise decisions that adapt 
>> the
>> world to his social, biological and intellectual needs and ideals.  That 
>> man
>> is the choicemaker of his universe is demonstrated by the history of 
>> human
>> civilization -- particularly the tremendous increases in life-expectancy,
>> productivity, and practical knowledge, and the accelerated advances in
>> communication, transportation, industry and commerce achieved over
>> just the last two centuries.
>>
>> Human Freedom is not simply a noble aphorism invented by moralists and
>> legislators.  The "unalienable rights" sanctioned by America's Founders
>> alludes to a cosmic principle that applies even to individuals living in
>> servitude.  Far more than a social right or a political entitlement, 
>> Freedom
>> is the scenario needed for the full appreciation of Value.  It forces us 
>> to
>> weigh and choose personal values in the context of an indeterminate 
>> reality,
>> while at the same time affording us a singular opportunity to "make a
>> difference" in our own life-experience and, by example, in the community
>> of mankind at large.
>>
>> In summary, I maintain that it is a moral travesty to dismiss or reject 
>> the
>> discriminative and rational faculties with which human beings are 
>> uniquely
>> endowed.  To do so demeans our species and slights the individual's role
>> as the free agent of experiential value.
>>
>> Essentially speaking,
>> Ham