[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[John Carl]

Hi Mark,

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 4:32 PM, 118 <ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
> Nope, don't get it.  But I do get Ham, kinda.


Takes all kinds, I guess.

And I hope you know me well enough by now, Mark, to understand that I mean
that phrase literally.


> It would seem that you are
> working along the lines of cause and effect, or "which came first?".


Nope, that'd be more along Ham's line of thinking, I think.  I'm not much
troubled with postulations of cosmological first causes and big bang
beginnings.  Oct of 1959 saw my universe's beginning and I've considered a
lot of the stories I've been told about before that and the explanations
that seem relevant to my life I pay attention to. But mostly, I don't worry
too much about "which came first"  Everything is.  Deal with it.  Is my
motto.



> This
> of course is a paradox without much resolution.  Even the Buddhist notion
> of
> co-arising leads to a similar logical question.



Huh?  The insight that two things MUST logically arise together leads to
problems of first cause?  How does that work?  I'd say the Buddhist notion
of co-dependent arising leads to the refutation and avoidance of such
"similar logical questions" not leads to them.

  Maybe I've got it wrong tho.  I do that a lot these days!



>  I distinguish between Value
> and Quality.  Quality exists, it is what differentiates.  We create value.
>  But, of course this could also go on forever.
>


Well I distinguish between them too.  But absolutely more simplistically
than you (big surprise!)  Value is the line and Quality is the direction on
the line.  You can have a bad or negative value, but Quality is the good,
that's how I use, those two terms.  And when we talk about value being the
fundament of existence, I believe we are just starting down the path to the
MoQ.   Many metaphysical systems begins with this understanding and
insight.  The fall under the generic name of Idealism.

My idea of the MoQ is that  Quality is the direction, not the line.  That
the MoQ has something relevant to say about the fundamental existence of
betterness - not "line-ness".   I believe that this is the properly
Pirsigian interpretation, too.  Somethings I think we differ on, but not
this one.  This one, I differ with dave.  When I first asked the question,
Platt agreed with me, dmb says its all about the line-ness, and nobody else
had an opinion, that I noticed and it comes up now and then, but nobody
really wants to discuss it, that I notice.  A lot escapes my notice!

A lot doesn't, as well.  Hmmm...

And btw, when you day "this could also go on forever", do you mean that in a
bad way?  Because personally, I'm somewhat comforted by infinite processes
that I feel a part of.  I wouldn't mind going on forever...


>
> So, how about this?  Quality pulls value from us.  It creates the choices.
>



Well, "pulling value from us" sounds like taking choice away, to me.  I do
think of Quality having a "pull", but it is very, very subtle, in my
experience.  You know it when you see it, that is for sure.  But very often,
you don't see it and that's for the simple reason that it just isn't there.
Sometimes there is no Quality choice.  But there's still choice.

However, one thing I'm very sure of, when there is no choice, there is no
Quality. This does put me in a quandry to explain choice at the quantuum
level, which I will do, if pressed to.  (that's more a theat, than a promise
:-)

Does that make choice, more fundamental than Quality?  I'm not sure.  Here
again, Ham is probably the man for such debates.  I've got both in my life,
and I like it that way.  Perhaps what we need here is a nice "co-dependent
arising" and we can get back to drinking and dreaming.



>
>   One could say that the "I" is a quality decision.
>  That is the choice creates the "I".



Well, that's where my head is at.  Put there by my readings in Royce, of
course.  Did you know James came up with the term "Will to Believe" from an
earlier publication of Royce's?  I wish I could convince more of the
philosophers on this forum to look for themselves, into Royce.  There is so
much there and I can't talk about it all... I'm not really a focused type of
person, if you didn't notice.  :-)

But yup, I think the faithful-I is  a Quality decision, in every way.
Psychologically, Ontologically and Epistemologically.  If I'm missing any,
let me know.




>  Trying to nail these things down is
> the problem.  Jesus died for your sins, have you forgotten?  This last one
> was tongue in cheek, of course (or was it?).
>
>
Your guess is better than mine.  Personally, I don't think about my sins
much, and often wonder a bit about people who do.  One other good reason to
avoid churches cuz they are FULL of people just absolutely obsessing over
their sins.  Really does make you wonder what the hell they think they're
doing there.


Take Care,

John