[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[Ham Priday]

Hey, Tim --

> Ham, Horse,
>
> Horse, thank you for pointing out this handling of RMP's value!
> I will deal with it shortly.  I have maintained that Ham has a
> significantly different concept of Value.  Which is cool; but it
> has to be recognized and admitted that his 'value' and Pirsig's
> value are far from the same.  Ham, you can't just say that RMP
> meant what you now think when he wrote the letters 'Value'
> back then, just because you also attach the letters 'Value' to
> what you now think.  Come on!

Good grief, is a five-letter word really worth all this rage, Tim?  We were 
having what I thought was a productive intellectual discussion, until you 
began insisting that Pirsig's Quality is the equivalent of the "nothingness" 
that delineates finite being.  I don't see why I should now be obliged to 
defend Essentialism from this foreign notion.

Instead, let's consider your charge that "Ham's Value is significantly 
different" from RMP's.  You cite "moral" and "anthropological" reasons for 
this alleged difference:

[Quoting Ham's thesis]:
> "Despite existentialist views to the contrary, a critical understanding
> of experience leads to the conclusion that the essence of reality is
> implicit in its values rather than its physical "beingness", and that
> value sensibility must therefore precede material existence."
>
> So, our senses sense *your* 'value'.  Pirsig's value comes in more along
> the lines of 'general moral judgment'.  Your value-sense may eventually
> lead to certain emotions or feelings in the subject, but RMP's value is
> pointing directly at that feeling - and what's more, it is pointing to
> such value [as] exists culturally, socially, which is why this arises from
> a conversation about anthropology!

A "general moral judgment" is a collective consensus based on the persuasive 
power  of individual value judgments. Pirsig may be stressing human behavior 
as a cultural or societal response to subjective values.  However, I don't 
see that his value points "directly at that feeling," any more than my value 
does.  In fact, I've defined value in terms of aesthetic appreciation, 
psycho-emotional responses, and spiritual fulfillment, whereas Pirsig seems 
oncerned only with the collective results from an historical perspective 
(e.g., the Dusenberry comment).

Secondly, as Horse now confirms, Pirsig does equate his Quality to Value at 
the start of Chapter 5:
"The key was values, he thought. That was the weakest spot in the whole
wall of cultural immunity to new ideas the anthropologists had built around
themselves.  Value was a term they had to use, but under Boas’ science value 
does not really exist.  And Phædrus knew something about values. Before he 
had gone up into the mountains he had written a whole book on values. 
Quality. Quality was value. They were the same thing."

I make the same equivalence, although I much prefer 'Value" to 'Quality' 
because it encompasses the full measure of goodness/badness, as opposed to 
Quality which usually designates virtue or goodness.

So, Tim, apart from RMP's collective anthropological emphasis, there is no 
substantial difference between the value realized by the individual subject 
in my thesis and the value that attracts mankind in Pirsig's.

> "A thesis of this sort is colorful and interesting but it
> cannot be considered useful to anthropology without
> empirical support." -- isn't this similar to the fact that
> you maintain that you create your reality by value-sense,
> since there can be no other empirical support?
> Or am I stretching this, maybe? ...

Empirical facts garnered from history and anthropology can only predict 
behavioral tendencies under certain conditions.  No empirical research--even 
in the psychological sciences--proves or supports value-sensibility per se. 
Such theory is the province of that branch of philosophy known as 
epistemology.

> "What it always means is that you have hit an invisible
> wall of prejudice. ... Later, as his Metaphysics of Quality
> matured, he developed a name for the wall ... 'cultural
> immune system'.  But all he saw now was that he wasn't
> going to get anywhere ... until that wall had been breached."
> ... ("Many of the anthropologists seemed bright, interested,
> humane people ..."
> -- again, these words show what RMP  means by value.
> And this value is constructed by judgement, and is not
> directly sensible.)

"Cultural immune system" is a cute name for tribal, class or racial loyalty, 
which is the inevitable consequence of the "collective mindset" dominated by 
the authority of the masses.  This is why I have stressed "rational, 
self-directed value" as necessary for establishing an authentic society. 
You say "value is not directly sensible."  How can one make a judgment 
without a moral or valuistic basis?

> "The key to getting through the wall lay in re-examining
> the philosophical attitudes of Boas himself." -- 
> 'philosophical attitudes', again, are general, AND, abstract,
> not sensible.  They are what lie behind the directly sensible
> phenomena that come from a Boas *doing* his
> anthropology, and which RMP sensed (with his sensibility,
> as you mean it).

Again, you are trying to make a distinction here which applies only to the 
behavioral perspective RMP has chosen.  I read Lila several years ago, and 
have only a dim recollection of Phaedrus' trip to the mountains and his 
admiration for Harvard anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn who advocated a 
"systematic study of value systems"-- in other words, gathering empirical 
evidence of specific behavior patterns. That's not epistemology; it's 
anecdotal research that can reveal little if anything about the dynamics of 
value as a metaphysical phenomenon.

> "Margaret Mead said [of Boas], "He feared premature
> generalizations like the plague, and continually warned us
> against it."  Generalizations should be based on the facts
> and only on the facts." -- facts being akin to your 'Value', no?

No, Tim.  "Facts" relate to behavior, not value.

> "'It is indubitable that science was his [Boas' again] religion,'
> Kroeber said.  'He called his early conviction materialistic
> [valuistic?].  Science could tolerate nothing 'subjective'
> [synthetic?]; value judgments - and by infection even values
> considered as phenomena - must be absolutely excluded."
> "How are you going to prove in terms of the laws of physics that a
> certain attitude exists within a culture?" --- 'attitude' and 'culture'
> are keys to RMP's idea of 'value'.  So, rather: how are you going to
> prove in terms of Hamian Value(-sense) that a certain attitude exists
> within nothingness? ...

I don't don't know what this means, or where you are going with it.  But I 
see no point in reviewing long passages you've quoted from LILA in response 
to my exposition of Essentialism.  The philosophy of Essence isn't intended 
to be a guide to cultural history, nor was my thesis designed to fit 
scientific precepts.  It's a value cosmology for the contemporary individual 
seeking metaphysical understanding.  Such understanding does not come from 
studying the laws of physics or the habits of primitive cultures.

Tim, I have a B.S. in Biology/Chemistry but do not claim to be a scientist. 
So if your belief system must be based on empirical facts, I'm not the 
proper mentor.  I suggest you acquaint yourself with the theories of 
Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, P.F. Strawson, Gottfried Leibniz, 
or Fred Hoyle, all of whom were scientists or mathematicians with 
metaphysical leanings.  Should you later decide to resume our exploration of 
Essentialism without an axe to grind, I'll still be available.

Good luck in your search,
Ham