[MD] Quality and the Higgs Field: An Analogy

[John Carl]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

>
> Your arguments all seem to hang on the notion that morality is intrinsic to
> the universe.
> Since I believe that man actualizes the universe from Value, I find it
> difficult to respond to your comments in a way that makes sense to you.


Likewise, I'm sure.  I'm having a very difficult time with conveying the
idea that man is intrinsic to the universe... value is intrinsic to man,
therefore value must be intrinsic to the universe.  How can something that
seems so simple to me (and Mark has made the same point) be such a source of
confusion?



> When I tried to explain the difficulty of dealing with sensibility as an
> 'existent', you reduced my explanation to a meaningless aphorism:
>
>
Pardon if my efforts at simplification of your complex and evasive verbiage
exposes the meaninglessness of your premises, but hey, I can hardly help *
that*.



> If subjective awareness to you is only a neurological process going on in
> your head, then you reject the core self or 'psyche' as the locus of
> awareness.  Then the thoughts and feelings you experience are not 'yours'
> but are somehow extracted from a "qualitative field" that exists in nature
> or the universe.  My epistemology is based on the belief that
> value-sensibility, and the experience we derive from it, are proprietary to
> the self.
>
>

Your epistemology is based upon your beliefs and your beliefs are based upon
your psychological motivations to believe.  This is one of the points you
repeatedly evade.  So let's leave that point alone and just address your
logic.  You think value-sensibility is proprietary to the self, but how can
sensibility be proprietary when we only sense some *thing*
Without some aspect of otherness to sense, there would be no perception or
idea of a self in the first place.  So what does "proprietary" mean to you?
And why do you cling to it so forcefully?

Oops!  We're back to psychological motivations again.


As stated above, I believe that the universe is the physical construct of
> man's value-sensibility.  This construct is not just "part of the universe";
> it's, as you like to say, "the whole enchilada" of what we call existence.
>

Well then Ham, "man's value-sensibility" being the whole of existence
doesn't obviate value/morals from being intrinsic to the universe.  In fact,
it makes it "the whole enchilada", as I (And Pirsig) was saying in the first
place.



>
> I see no point in analyzing animal consciousness when there is so little
> agreement as to the functioning of human consciousness.  I'm not saying that
> animals have no feelings.  Sure, chimps exhibit grief for dead relatives.  A
> dog winces when you step on its foot.  But does this mean that animals share
> man's value-sensibility?  Not only is this impossible to prove empirically,
> but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
>
>
Fair enough.  It's admittedly a debateable point.  Does a dog have a
buddha-nature?  Who knows?  But I for one would argue on the side of the way
mammals *seem* to share emotional congruences with man.  But as you say,
when we don't agree on the facts of human consciousness, it seems silly to
go any further.  If you believe the universe is intrinsically amoral, then
of course all the animals in it are as well.  But how  you set man apart
from this formulation of yours is what continues to elude me.



>
>
> But keep working at your "love and understanding", John.  You won't offend
> anybody, and you may even come to understand that the love and admiration
> you feel for others is your subjective sensibility, not a fragment of
> Quality you've picked up from the universe.
>
>
Well that part makes sense.  My love and understanding are my own subjective
sensibility, I'll grant you.  But believing in Love and Understanding writ
large, and striving for Intersubjective agreement make more sense to me than
all your solipsistic rejection of the reality of otherness.



> Essentially blockaded,
>
> Ham
>

Just trying to help,

John