[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[John Carl]

Hi Ham,

Picking the threads of this morning, I find you.  And I was just talking
about you!  What a coincidence.  I hope you are having a satisfactory day.

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

John:

 How can you

> have Quality if there is no choice?
>>
>
>
Ham:


> Thank you, gentlemen.  I commend you both for acknowledging this truth.
>
> We can talk about "interrelated patterns" 'til the cows come home, but it
> won't lead to an understanding of the individual's role in existence or the
> morality that mankind seeks.


John:

However, Ham, we can talk about the individual's role in choice.  It might
seem obvious to you that only humans can choose, but I disagree.  Animals
plainly choose and all of life revolves around certain aspects of choosing,
in the context of environmental inputs and possibilities.  However, if you
mean by "individual" an individual paramecium, for instance, then I
completely agree.

However, it seems to me that we can have exhaustive conversation on what we
do agree is the main point - "the morality that mankind seeks".  So we can
go there, till the cows do indeed come home.

Ham:

We can compartmentalize "intellect" and "quality" and consider them "agents
> of evolution".  But when we do so, we deny the core sensibility that drives
> human behavior.  That in itself is intellectually immoral, in my opinion.
>
>
John;

Unless quality is the core sensibility that drives human behavior, and that
seems to be a definitional postulate in our arena of discourse here, so I
don't quite get the problem there.

Ham:


> Metaphysics isn't simply an intellectual tool for "overcoming" subjects and
> objects.  There is a great deal more at stake, most of it vital to the
> life-experience.  The concept I get from this forum is that mankind has
> somehow arrived at "the intellectual level", as if the era of
> intellectuality was "out there" all the time, waiting for us to evolve
> sufficiently to latch onto it.  Justification for this peculiar belief seems
> to be that since intellect is a level of Quality, it has to exist as an
> extra-corporeal realm, together with all the intelligence that we humans are
> (falsely) credited for.
>

John: I agree. If our metaphysics were just a tool for overcoming SOM, we
wouldn't need it.  There are many such systems around.  Our metaphysics
should be an intellectual tool for realizing betterness.

On a side note, the concept I get from this forum, is that this forum isn't
very serious about metaphysics.

Ham:


At the risk of being repetitious, let me simply add that it is
> "individuality" which enables value to be realized in [as] a differentiated
> world.  And, by virtue of man's innate sensibility and reason, every
> individual is free to act in accordance with his or her proprietary values.
> This makes man the "choicemaker" of his universe, allowing him to exercise
> "free will" as an agent of value limited only by the laws of existential
> reality.  To deny this principle reduces the individual to an automaton
> subject to the vicissitudes of nature and/or the coercion of external
> authority.
>
>
John:

Many people see themselves exactly as you describe.  Their existential
reality IS that they are automatons subject to nature and society, with no
real freedom to do as they wish to do.  I used to get frustrated with this
kind of thinking myself, and try and argue with them, but then I realized,
absence of free will is a choice as well!  If they want to look at it that
way, who am I to argue them out of their choice?

Nice to hear from you as usual, Ham.

John