[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

John, Ham,


> John:
> 
>  How can you have Quality if there is no choice?

[Tim]
yes, nice.  Though I might add that this might be seen more readily if
we include the substitution Quality=Morality:  How can you have Morality
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.

[Tim]
'morality that mankind seeks': hmmmmm, hmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmm  --- just
feeling a bit pessimistic at the moment, thanks Ham.
 
> 
> 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.

[Tim]
Thank you John!  I have been a fan of using the word 'person' for any
individual with a 'personality' (though perhaps I have to add something
about social...).  I can guarantee you that the cats I had when I was a
kid had personalities (and they were social creatures - both intra- and
inter- species).  The human being is a more liberating confinement than
a cat: but persons we are both.


> 
> [John] 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.

[Tim]
again: "hmmmmmmmm".  My cats were really quite moral, but 'mankind'!? 
--- perhaps I should shut up till I'm feeling more optimistic.



> 
> 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.

[Tim]
Ham, thanks for saying 'differentiated' rather than something like
'negational'!  I still haven't gotten too far into your thesis, though I
have progressed a bit; I can say that I think our difference will be
entirely in the way we imagine the absolute (and the words that follow
thereupon)...  But this, regarding our 'I's, and the differentiated
world of common, I think we already agree.  I read somewhere here
recently about a disagreement about the absolute (I think it was between
james and _______ ) and that James told the other fellow (was it
bradley, John?), that a difference in an understanding of the absolute
should not come between gentlemen.  Perhaps this is where we should
settle, Ham...  we'll see.


> John:
> 
> Many people see themselves exactly as you [Ham] describe [automatonish].  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?

[Tim]
yes, it is a funny position!

But, there is a third (and maybe a fourth): that there is choice, but no
Morality.  Since we have to live (or die, or suffer even worse)
together, you are someone to argue them out of their choice. 


Tim
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