[MD] irony and Socrates

[Ham Priday]

On Thursday, 10/22/09 11:13 AM John Carl wrote:


> 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 seem to be confusing values with habit formation, such as 
inter-dependency, and social mores which are authoritative.  The child does 
not "absorb" values.  Value is sensed, innately, prior to individual 
experience and social relations.  This sensibility is the essence of 
self-awareness and the root source of experiential reality.  What is "taught 
to the child" are rules of behavior which include the knowledge of what is 
"good" and worthy as opposed to what is harmful and should be avoided.  This 
is "social conditioning" that reflects the values of the custodian rather 
than the child.  That the child depends on the mother for its safety, 
nourishment and affection is a suirvival instinct common to all species. 
But maternal love and the bonding of parent to child are not what I call 
proprietary value.

> 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 values are individually realized, whether they are instilled by another 
person or self-constructed.  Why do you say that the individual cannot have 
intellectual values?  Are individual freedom, acquiring knowledge, and a 
sense of justice not intellectual values?   Must they be "communally 
recognized" to qualify as one's personal values?   The precept that "all 
value is relational" doesn't mean that value is not realized by the 
individual.  .

> Human relations are social.
> ue [or?] life would be meaningless.

Human relations are social, not valuistic.  Whether life would be 
meaningless without them is a question for anthropology or sociology.   My 
personal view is the Value, not "relations", is what gives life meaning and 
drives mankind.

> 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.

As you know, I don't speak in levels or acknowledge value as "patterns", 
John.  But I think we put too much emphasis on Society as a "collective 
pool" of both intellect and value.  Value realization begins and ends with 
the individual, and intellection is a function of the individual's thought 
process.

 Objectively yours,
Ham