[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

Ham,


> 
> [Ham] Good grief, is a five-letter word really worth all this rage, Tim?

[Tim]
no rage!  just frustration.  From my perspective it seems like you are
standing there, pat, thinking that you have IT, not reaching out to meet
me, and confusing what I do say at that.

>[Ham]  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.

[Tim]
I didn't intend equivalent, just that your 'nothingness' as the best
cognate for Pirsig's 'Quality' - this rather than your suggestion that
it should be like your 'Value'.

> [Ham]  I don't see why I should now be obliged to 
> defend Essentialism from this foreign notion.

[Tim]
there is no obligation but what you impose on yourself.  For my part, I
think that you are well off regarding 'nothingness', and you still have
not shown a hint of effort to explain how your 'I' is capable of doing
any willful action; it seems merely to be a sensible receptacle of value
(both terms of which I glossed over a bit in trying to understand
'essence', 'nothingness', and 'I').  Though, if you have addressed the
ability to willfully do below, I haven't read ahead yet.  Anyway, if you
are happy with your conceptions, and you are happy with my not
understanding you, consider yourself under no obligation.

> 
> [Ham] 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:
> 

> 
>[Ham] A "general moral judgment" is a collective consensus based on the
> persuasive power  of individual value judgments.

[Tim]
I knew this came out wrong after I sent it.  And, since 'value' at this
point must be treated as unknown, I can't connect to your explanation. 
By 'Moral', I used RMP's equivalency of Quality = Morality; by general,
I meant that it wasn't some simple human sense object (sight, touch,
etc.), by 'judgment', which was my great mistake, I meant to avoid
'intellectual', because it is an - excuse my reusing the bad word -
judgment in the utter present of DQ: that is, it is a mystical/spiritual
experience, and the fruit of a lifetime of accumulated such experiences.
 So, the 'general moral judgment' is that of an individual, in the utter
pre-intellectual present, though it does carry collective, societally
consensual, and persuasive overtones.  I still don't know what to make
of 'value' here.

> [ham] 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.

[Tim]
maybe this is my bad.  But if so, I will hold you accountable for a a
poor choice of word in 'sensible' then - I think.  No rage or ill will,
just frustration.  Let me thank you again for your efforts, just to be
sure.  Anyway, let us see.

> [Ham] In fact, I've defined value in terms of aesthetic appreciation, 
> psycho-emotional responses, and spiritual fulfillment,

[Tim]
maybe this is my bad, but I was working under the idea that value is
sensed, and that is one thing.  A simple thing.  I was working under
this idea of an utter present.  aesthetic 'appreciation',
psycho-emotional 'response', and spiritual 'fulfillment', are all
complex and drawn out processes which I thought were separate from the
sensing, and more in the 'realizing' part...  Anyway, if you stick to
this you have to bring all those terms to the fore of DQ, or else admit
that your Value is more complex than Pirsig's - again, I think.  Pirsig
has said 'you know Quality', but there was really big questions in his
mind whether or not he should even try to help this statement with
explanation, definition, or a metaphysics.  This 'know' was not an
intellectual 'know', but a more mystical, pre-intellectual,
indescribable 'know'.  Perhaps I should say 'apprehension' rather than
judgment or feeling or intuition.

> [Ham] whereas Pirsig seems oncerned only with the collective results from an historical perspective 
> (e.g., the Dusenberry comment).

[Tim]
if you are talking about the Dusenberry comment when teh indians called
him a *good* man, that is 'collective' and 'historical' only in that it
was a DQ apprehension which persisted time and time again.  But it was
built up of little apprehensions in the utter present.  Ham, I am not
saying that Pirsig got it perfect, but it is much easier for my to get
the fullness of his Value this way, than through your language.  You
language is a huge barrier.  Perhaps this is just me.

> 
> [Ham] Secondly, as Horse now confirms, Pirsig does equate his Quality to Value
> at the start of Chapter 5:

[Tim]
arrggghhhhh.  This is why it's so frustrating: I fully recognized this
passage.  From your statement, I have no idea if you see that I submit
to the fact that Pirsig wrote it!  The question isn't what was written,
but the meaning behind it.  Is your Value and Pirsig's value one and the
same?  In other words, can I take anything that Pirsig says about
'value', and say, this is what Ham thinks?


>[RMP] "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."


>[Ham] 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.

[Tim]
hmmm, this is much different than I commonly think.  In common terms, I
don't really see 'badness' coming through either; but there can be
things which certain people live that I don't value at all, certain tv
shows or what not.  Perhaps I am not capable of saying how I viewed
Quality before my recent endeavors, but if 'badness' was to come in, it
was here; low quality junk: crap that would break just cause it was
junky.  But, regarding metaphysics, value was not a part of my normal
lingo, and quality crept up as the aspect that made something what it
was.  So, for instance, when I read the creation story of the bible, I
would think, 'okay, god created this distinction via the introduction of
some quality: light v. dark, etc.'.  Or, as another example, an electron
has a quality to it which we call charge.

anyway, in reading your thesis I never once thought that such qualities
as goodness could be directly sensible as a value.  When the indians
said that 'that is a good dog', I thought that there was no way that any
of that was sensible according to your thesis.  I was thinking that the
sensible values were the light impinging on your retnas, the vibrating
of your ear drums, etc.  Even teh dog was an illusion.  From your
thesis:

"Cupping the delicate blossom in my hand, I study the flower's crimson
petals; but the color, shape and texture that I am experiencing are not
attributes of the rose itself but of my visual and tactile sensory
faculties.  The familiar sweet fragrance I sense in its presence is, in
actuality, a chemical alteration between my olfactory nerve endings that
recalls past encounters with roses from my memory.  I stoop to pluck the
flower but am stopped by the prickly thorns of its stem; the pain I
feel—a result of the traumatized condition of the nerves in my
fingertips when the skin is pierced—is a further reminder that, except
for the presumed being of this living plant before me, all of its
identifiable attributes are actually properties of my organic
sensibility.  Thus, the flower whose existence I so confidently and
without hesitation reported a moment ago on analysis turns out to be the
mere spectre of a rose—a concoction of my own proprietary awareness."

If I extrapolate this to people and society, how am I to understand that
your handling will permit me of a more full apprehension of all the
myriad moral holdings, etc.?


> 
> [Ham] 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.

[Tim]
let me see.  (and let me see the repurcussions for 'sensibility' too.)

RMP, ch.5 'Lila' - going backwards

"The reason values seem so wolly-headed to empiricists is that
empiricists keep trying to assign them to subjects or objects.  You
can't do it.  You get all mixed up because values don't belong to either
group.  They are a separate category all their own." --- this works for
you I think.  Yes or no though?

"The value is *between* the stove and the oaths.  *Between* the subject
and the object lies the value."  --- are we still good?  Do you see why
I equated your 'nothingness' to 'Quality'? --- "This value is more
immediate, more directly sensed than any 'self' or any 'object' to which
it might be later assigned."  --- this could be in your wheelhouse, I
agree; but still, yes or no please?

"It [the MoQ] says that values are not outside of the experience that
logical positivism limits itself to.  They are the *essence* [RMP's
emphasis] of this experience.  Values are *more* empirical, in fact,
than subjects or objects." --- now it gets tricky!  This sounds like Ham
even more than RMP!  However, we are getting further (as we go back
towards the beginning of Chapter 5 here) from simple human sensibilities
(the five senses), and into the mystical/spiritual moment of DQ which I
thought you avoided entirely in your thesis.  We are getting to where
RMP might ratehr make the substitution Morality.  First, do you submit
that Hamian 'Value' = Morality?  This is key! Second, why then in your
thesis was there no treatment of this, which is seemingly far more
important that pricking your finger on a rose thorn?  Does your sense
faculty permit of the sensing of values like 'goodness', and
'well-intentioned', or 'bright, interested and humane', and all these
high interpersonal, and cultural, and historical Pirsigian Moral Values?

Or, when you said 'apart from RMP's collective anthropological
emphasis', did you say 'emphasis', but mean just flat out apart from?


> 
>[Ham] "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?

[Tim]
maybe I had you backwards here, but I said that working from your terms,
in your thesis.  I don't have a simple good-dog / bad-dog sense.  I can
sense the goodness of a dog in DQ, but it is from a very complex
indirect structure that I have build via past experience. 

I must repeat what you snipped because I feel it quite unfair, an
example of you not meeting me half way I would say, and a cause of my
frustration:

"[RMP] 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. 
--- perhaps it was my bad choice of the word 'judgment' which I
corrected above, but, to repeat, perhaps 'apprehension' would be better.
 And what I was saying is that such valuations do not come from a simple
5 senses picture.  The are a result of the as-of-yet wholly undescribed
mashup in DQ.  Which mashup, by the way, must include willful behavior
which you still do not account for.

But, the fact that you pose the question, 'how can you make a judgment
without a *moral OR valuistic* basis?  is giving me hope that we are
getting somewhere - and that I have been mistaken about your thesis.  It
seems 'moral' would have helped from the get go.

[Tim previously]
> "[RMP] 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).

> 
>[Ham] Again, you are trying to make a distinction here which applies only to
> the behavioral perspective RMP has chosen.

[Tim]
Ham, if I made a mistake it was because I though your concept of
sensibility did not permit for a direct sense of another person's
'philosophical attitudes'.  There may be some irony here!

> [Ham]  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.

[Tim]
uugghhhh.  Are we back at square one?  Can 'value systems' be directly
sensed, as value, by your sensible faculty?  Or do the 'behavior
patterns' have to be synthesized intellectually in order to e-valuate
these value systems later?

"[RMP quoting Kluckhohn] culture must include the explicit and
systematic study of values and value-systems viewed as observable,
describable, and comparable phenomena of nature."

RMP would say, I think, that the Quality of a value system, its value,
can be apprehended in DQ.  And the point of this is that the
intelligence can then manipulate these apprehensions to help inform
society, which seems to be the goal.  With this quote of yours regarding
the empirical gathering of evidence of specific behavior patterns, I
wonder if my comparison of your value to facts and data is not more
proper!  Is the Quality of complex, cultural, moral situations directly
sensible or no?

and though such research is not of interest for the actual building of a
metaphysics, the question above is.

> 
> >[Tim] "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?
> 
> [Ham] No, Tim.  "Facts" relate to behavior, not value.

[Tim]
wtf!  Where does behavior come from?  what relation does it bear with
value?  How can a negate who's sole capacity is to sense value manage to
behave at all?!  And how can you even be sure that there ever was a
behavior (you can't be sure that there was a rose)?  How can you talk of
facts?  All you know is what you experience, and all you experience is
the sensation of value.  Right?!

"[Ham, thesis] The bottom line is that we can know only what we can
experience.  Even facts and descriptions that come to us
second-hand—from textbooks and lectures, for example—originate as
sensory values in someone's experience and are filed away in our memory
bank as if they were directly experienced.  In truth,  nothing can be
said to exist that is not capable of being experienced."

so how am I wrong to replace facts with value?

> 
> >[Tim previously] "'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? ...
 
> [Ham] 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.

[Tim]
well, I thought that this passage, more fully than any other I think,
brought your 'essentialism' - as I was thinking of it at the time - into
the current framework in which I am trying to see if your Value is close
to RMP's.  Perhaps I was wrong.  But, I need some source other than your
thesis it seems because your words have not sufficed.


>[Ham]  The philosophy of Essence isn't intended 
> to be a guide to cultural history,

[Tim]
history shmistory, does it relate to culture now?

> [Ham] nor was my thesis designed to fit 
> scientific precepts.

[Tim]
I was comparing your thesis to the problems plagued by the scientific
precepts you suggest you have avoided.  If your value is sensed solely
by teh 5 senses, then I equate it to data, facts, and materialism.  Just
as Boas could not tolerate subjectivism, you cannot tolerate the idea
that your 'nothingness' is actually something.

> [Ham]  It's a value cosmology for the contemporary
> individual seeking metaphysical understanding.

[Tim]
according to RMP this is ultimately a fools errand, but it is done
because purity is foolish too!  Now, I am not totally convinced that it
is a fools errand, which is why I am talking with you; but, if a proper
physics does not fall out of a metaphysics, that metaphysics has not
attained to the understanding that was sought.

[RMP, still ch5 LILA]
"What made this all so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself had
insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined.  Yet here he was
about to define it.  Was this some kind of sell-out?  His mind went over
this many times." ... "A part of it said, 'Don't do it. ...'" ... "The
trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking.  There was
another part that kept saying, "Ahh, do it anyway.  It's interesting" 
This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and
telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay out
of the refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars.  To the
intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality [see
big Q little q] of its own.  It produces a certain excitement even
though it leaves a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a
party that has lasted too long.  OR Lila last night.  It isn't anything
of lasting beauty; no joy forever.  What would you call it?  Degeneracy,
he guessed.  Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a
degenerate activity. [Paragraph] But the answer to all this, he thought,
was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy
of another sort.  That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of.  Purity,
identified, ceases to be purity.  Objections to pollution are a *form*
of pollution. ... Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing
metaphysics is a part of life."

you see I'm down for some degeneracy too.


> [Ham]  Such understanding does not come from 
> studying the laws of physics or the habits of primitive cultures.

[Tim]
but a metaphysics has to permit of these activities, and I don't see how
yours does.  That was the point of all my efforts in the last email.

> 
> [Ham] 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.

[Tim]
hmmmm.  The comparison to empirical fact was not expressing my hopes,
but my best guess at your position!  As far as a mentor...  I am half
interested in a partner.  You are the only other one here with such an
interest in this degenerate behavior of trying to hammer out a
fundament.  Well, sorry Mark, I know you are here too.  But you seem so
settled in your righteousness - and the purity of your essence - that
communication is agonizing.  From my perspective, which is not very
advanced, I have but one a priori requirement.  'Nothingness' has got to
go.  Something is.  Ham, if you are quite sure that one day people will
look back and say, 'man, that Ham guy, he had all figured out
perfectly!" then by all means, pay me no mind.  But if you think you
still have anything to learn, then I could see some enjoyment in a
pursuit.  But the frustration is getting to be about too much for me
too.

anyway, I do not think that your 'essentialism' is about to birth a
physics.  The physics is no goal, but a check on one's work.  If you
ever attain to that metaphysical understanding you seek, I have a very
strong suspicion that that physics will fall out of its own accord.  I
think you have a decent start on half of the story, but you relegate the
other half to nothing - I can't quite ascertain why - and your growth is
stunted.  But of course, what do I know, I am having a bear of a time
trying to understand you what-so-ever.

> [Ham]  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.

[Tim]
well, as I said, I think you have misapprehended my scientific
interests, but I am much obliged for the suggestions.  I have not
studied any of these.  And, as they are dead, well, I can't quite be
sure on all, but either way, I'm not going to be interacting with them,
I will probably be long gone before I study them with any vigor.  But I
definitely appreciate the pointing to the sources.


> [Ham]  Should you later decide to resume our exploration
> of Essentialism without an axe to grind, I'll still be available.

[Tim]
Thank you for your continued willingness to relate your 'essentialism'
to me.  I'm sorry that you think I have an axe to grind.  I'm not trying
to defend the MoQ.  I'm not trying to render metaphysics subservient to
physics, or science in general.  I thought that I had something to offer
your progress in essentialism.  But, I think you have understood me even
less than I understood you.  It's all good.  (as for my availability to
you, I make no promises in life, so I cannot make a guarantee, but you
have my email address and I don't see why I should be unwilling to
converse with you in the future.  As it is, I think the value of my time
in the MoQ may be near its end; I almost left before I decided to come
back to offer you my perspective on your essentialism.  And if you doubt
my sincerity in this I think that my thoroughness, and, more
importantly, my efforts to understand your positions relative to your
efforts to understand mine defend me.  I think that my 'rage', that is,
my frustration, is excusable in this light.  (to be sure, I came to help
you out of selfishness: because the world does not meet my satisfaction,
and the only way I can see that it might get there before I die - or
even within our eon - is if I help it as much as I can.)

>[Ham] 
> Good luck in your search,
> Ham
> 
>

[Tim]
Thank you.  Sincerely.
I would ask you what your hopes are for essentialism, as I think it
would be insincere to wish you luck in your 'search', but...  Neither
will I wish you success with your hopes for essentialism; but I do wish
you all the best.

before adieu: I still would really like you to tell me how your
metaphysics provides me with the ability to do, to choose, to will
behavior.  You can ignore everything else, but I will be dissatisfied if
I receive no comment about this.  When we broke off conversation the
last time you advised me to read your thesis, telling me that it would
tell me where I would find myself in your essentialism.  I mustered the
effort to do so.  There was no answer.  In an email to Marsha I had said
something very much like, "even if I eventually agree that your
description of your 'I' is sufficient, I will still prefer one that
highlights 'choice' and 'will', as I think these are the most vital
prerogatives of the 'I'".  To this you responded favorably.  I agree
that sensibility is necessary, but I consider it attendant to 'will'. I
do not think that you have accounted for 'will' in essentialism.  What
is worse, you have made no acknowledgment that my contention has even
been made.  Is this a valid contention?  If not, a simple reply, 'no',
will cover my requirement for you to meet some standard of Quality.

anyway,
thank you for your time and efforts,
and, again, all the best,

Tim
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