[MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy

[Ham Priday]

Platt --


> No doubt science comes a cropper when it tries to explain
> beginnings. It latches onto determinism with a vengeance,
> but becomes all wimpy when asked to explain what caused
> the Big Bang or how life emerged from swamp mud.
> Logic too melts at beginnings, tumbling into infinite regress
> without even trying. So I'm led to believe, "Something else
> is going on, I know not what."

An honest response, I suppose, but a spineless one from a philosophical 
viewpoint.  For someone who defends a political position as vigorously as 
you do, I must say your apathy concerning the nature of reality is 
surprising.  Clearly you smell the flowers and savor the beauty in your 
passage through existence, but are you really content to live out the 
remainder of your life suspecting that "something else is going on", yet not 
venturing a guess as to what it may be?  I find that somewhat incredulous.

Not to get overly personal, Platt, but were I to know you better I'd likely 
discover something in your upbringing or background that accounts for such 
complacency.

> A biologist's "Shazam" is his exclamation at witnessing
> a miracle, the same sort of reaction your may have had
> when you created the notion of an uncreated Creator.
> It's equivalent to "Eureka" and "Oops."

I note that you're quite vocal in your criticism of Science.  (That, too, 
relates to your personal experience.)  I was educated in the sciences, and 
most of my working career has been involved with the electronics and 
chemical industries.  Although I realize the philosophical limitations of 
the scientific approach, I can't fault a methodology that has effectively 
applied objective knowledge to products and solutions for virtually every 
practical human need.  In all fairness, the "Oops factor" criticism is valid 
only with respect to ultimate, non-objective questions which are outside the 
domain of Science.

> So does Essence exist or not? To quote a familiar philanderer,
> I guess, "It depends on what your definition of is, is." :-)

I won't equivocate in the Clintonian style.  The technically correct answer 
is that Essence (itself) does not exist, although of course it encompasses 
existence.  Now, before you accuse me of another "self-contradiction", let 
me remind you that existence itself is an arrangement of objects (existents) 
separated from each other by nothingness.  So, technically, it's a system of 
things (that exist) and voids (that don't exist).  To get more "technical", 
scientists have calculated the critical density of interstellar space as 
equivalent to about one hydrogen atom per cubic meter.  Since 90% of the 
atoms in the universe are hydrogen, and the mass of a hydrogen atom is 
contained in a single positively charged proton encircled by an electron, 
the universe is mostly empty space (i.e., nothingness).

> Well my logic tells me there must be nothing for there to be something.

True, as I've explained above.  However, even nothingness is relative (as it 
relates to "thingness"), so that having a system of disparate objects 
divided by nothingness presupposes a creator.

> Pirsig's Quality is undefined so it remains neither created or uncreated.
> In that respect it's like Beauty. We know it exists because it is an
> experience, but be damned if we can define it. All we can do is say,
> "See for yourself."

Beauty is an esthetic value, just as morality and ethics are social values. 
We apprehend value in a relational sense, as applied to objects and events. 
But Value does not exist apart from the absolute source, and the relational 
values we sense are not existents, as are objective phenomena.  The values 
of experience are intellectualized differentially from Essence, which (as I 
stated above) is a non-existent.

Let me paint my concept of Value in what hopefully will be a more 
comprehensible scenario.  Our human world is not Essence, and we ourselves 
are negated from it.  That's what makes us "free agents".  But, like the 
parable of the Prodigal Son, as 'negates' of Essence, we are drawn back to 
our Creator by its Value to us, thus completing the circle of existence. 
This Value is what our experience converts to "being in the world", and we 
synthesize it as a relational space/time system in which we participate as 
observers.  In other words, we are the agents who realize Value as beauty, 
truth, love, goodness, order, etc. (as well as their negative equivalents), 
and that realized Value becomes our inextricable link to our estranged 
source.

> For me the answer falls into the category of, "Something else is
> going on." I like Wittgenstein's statement: "Whereof one cannot
> speak, thereof one must be silent."  Or as aptly summed up by
> my late father, "I love a tree."
>
> But since I enjoy our conversations so much, silence becomes
> impossible.

I appreciate the sentiment you feel on confronting the mystery (or miracle) 
of existence.  But I am more of a sleuth than you in my efforts to solve it. 
I, too, enjoy our dialogues, and hope that my
bold explications have not disturbed your silence.

Enjoy the weekend,
Ham

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