[MD] irony and Socrates

[John Carl]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

>
>
>  I believe individual values arise from social patterns, starting
>> with the most basic of all social interactions, mother and child.
>>
>
> You then criticized Pirsig for being "dialectically deficient".  The love
> between mother and child represents the value of each participant in this
> relationship.  But if value arises from social patterns there ARE NO
> "individual values".  If anything is dialectially defiicient here, it's your
> interpretation.
>


Taking on Pirsig dialectically makes about as much sense to me as taking on
a grandmaster in a chess match.  I know I won't win but maybe I'll learn
something.

So thanks for taking up his cause in the conflict Ham, even though you don't
ultimately accept his cosmological epistomo-whatsit.

First, you seem to overlook that the child is absorbing fundamental values
from the mother - this is a one-way process.   The social values of caring,
love and bonding are built-in to the mom, and taught to the child.  They're
built in to the mom by HER mammalian birth and bonding and passed along.

You can't have individual social values.  Nor can you have individual
intellectual values.  Values must be communally recognized and shared in
order for them to exist at all.  Just like a particle is only a particle
relative to the rest of the universe; if a particle exists in isolation,
then it IS the universe.

All value is relational.

Human relations are social.

All human values are social.


>
> The most fundamental role of man is to bring value into existence.  He does
> this incrementally, by differentiating value into representative phenomena
> (objects and events) on which he passes judgment. "Man is the measure of all
> things," and value sensibility is his yardstick.
>

You're relying on that tricky old bugaboo,  an ambiguity in the term value,
to make your argument.  What is judgement based upon?  Values.  What is
judgement deciding?  Differentiated values.    If you're just gonna take a
fundamental concept and use it any old way you want, you might as well call
the whole thing essence and be done with it.




> Your revered author is right is this instance.  Value-sensibility is the
> very essence of man.  Without it there would be no value, and without
> realized value life would be meaningless.
>
>
I agree completely.  The point under discussion is how this value-able
existence arises - the process.  I'm postulating that 3rd level patterns of
value are born from social bonding of mammals.

Without which, we'd all be meaningless.

Idealistically yours,

John