[MD] EvO~lution and a VaLue centered metaphysics

[X Acto]

Ron:
Two more very important quotes in my arguement against 
the SOL interpretation of intellect=SOM (or s/o)

 

"The idea that the world is composed of nothing but moral value sounds impossible 
at first. Only objects are supposed to be real. 'Quality' is supposed to be just 
a vague fringe word that tells what we think about objects. The whole idea that 
Quality can create objects seems very wrong. But we see subjects and objects as 
reality for the same reason we see the world right-side up although the lenses 
of our eyes actually present it to our brains upside down. We get so used to 
certain patterns of interpretation we forget the patterns are there.
Phaedrus remembered reading about an experiment with special glasses that made 
users see everything upside down and backward. Soon their minds adjusted and 
they began to see the world 'normally' again. After a few weeks, when the 
glasses were removed, the subjects again saw everything upside down and had 
to relearn the vision they had taken for granted before.
The same is true of subjects and objects. The culture in which we live hands 
us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept 
of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses. 
If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or, 
God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who 
still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird, 
if not actually crazy.
But he isn't. The idea that values create objects gets less and less weird 
as you get used to it. Modern physics on the other hand gets more and more 
weird as you get into it and indications are that this weirdness will increase. 
In either case, however, weirdness isn't the test of truth. As Einstein said, 
common sense — non-weirdness — is just a bundle of prejudices acquired before 
the age of eighteen. The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with 
experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these."

"This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is to trash all 
subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike subject-object metaphysics 
the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist on a single exclusive truth. If 
subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're permitted 
only one construction of things - that which corresponds to the 'objective' 
world - and all other constructions are unreal. But if Quality or excellence 
is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one 
set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek the absolute Truth.' One seeks 
instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge 
that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken 
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can then examine 
intellectual realities the same way one examines paintings in an art gallery,
 not with an effort to find out which one is the 'real' painting, but simply 
to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are many sets of intellectual 
reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more quality than others, 
but that we do so is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values.
Or, using another analogy, saying that a Metaphysics of Quality is false and a 
subject-object metaphysics is true is like saying that rectangular coordinates 
are true and polar coordinates are false. A map with the North Pole at the 
center is confusing at first, but it's every bit as correct as a Mercator map. 
In the Arctic it's the only map to have. Both are simply intellectual patterns 
for interpreting reality and one can only say that in some circumstances 
rectangular coordinates provide a better, simpler interpretation.
The Metaphysics of Quality provides a better set of coordinates with which to 
interpret the world than does subject-object metaphysics because it is more 
inclusive. It explains more of the world and it explains it better. 
The Metaphysics of Quality can explain subject-object relationships 
beautifully but, as Phaedrus had seen in anthropology, a subject-object 
metaphysics can't explain values worth a damn. It has always been a mess 
of unconvincing psychological gibberish when it tries to explain values."