[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[John Carl]

Ham,

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

>
> Hello John, also Adrie and Mark--
>
> If I can prevail upon John, who came up with a new heading, I prefer to
> resurrect the title I initiated with Mark last October for two reasons:
> 1)  Value (Quality) and its relation to morality is the real subject of
> this discussion.
> 2)  While the flippancy of gastro-intestinal effects may be amusing, I'd
> prefer to get away from analogy, if possible, and discuss the ramifications
> of Value in existence as a metaphysical principle.
>

John:

By all means, my friend.  Age before beauty. :-)

Besides, I got to express my feelings about "gastro-intestinal effects" with
Marsha in a way that satisfied my appetite.




> [John]:
>
>>   This is how social morality evolves.  Not out of
>> man's head, but from the well-springs of man's being - his
>> relationship with his natural environment.  The only possible
>> source of consensus is this "common environment".
>>
>
>
Ham:


> If Nature is your "common environment", I see no connection between the
> laws of nature and social morality.  Boyles law, the conservation of energy,
> the relativity of mass to energy, and the law of gravity have nothing to do
> with morality as I comprehend it.  What is society's "congruence with that
> common environment"  supposed to mean, and how does it apply to social
> institutions?
>
>
John:

It is really quite simple, Ham.  Society's congruence with the common
environment is the lingua franca of our very being.  It is from whence all
our conceptualizations arise.  We think in terms of the things we perceive.
This used to be more widely understood, but with the advent of the
technological environment in which we now dwell,  media has warped our
perceptions of Nature and this deep truth  is slowly being forgotten or
overlooked or cast aside as irrelevant.   Some philosophers I appreciate
blame the basic estrangement as starting with Descartes.  And I agree. He
should have known that  we think about what we perceive, and that is how we
come to the conclusion that we are.


Han:

If it's any consolation, John, I do like Jeffers' poem very much, and agree
> that "the beauty of the universe" lies in "the wholeness of life and
> things."  For me, you see, this expresses the principle of Essential Value
> from which man is estranged at birth.  As a finite being whose experience is
> based on a handful of sensory inputs, man only knows value (essent-value)
> relationally in terms of finite beingness.
>
>
John:

"Estranged" you say.  And yet what is so strange about birth?  Viewing birth
as an estrangement seems so foreign to my philosophy that I hardly know how
to even begin to address this with you.  The peace of the womb is the peace
of nothingness, of unrealized being.  Its really no different than death,
when you think about it.  You say man "only" knows value relationally, and
yet I say your pejorative "only" is completely out of place.  My God man!
This "knowing value relationally in finite beingness" is "only" everything!
What more could a man want than that?


Ham:

Nature is, indeed, much more than an intellectual construct.  It is embued
> with the intelligent design, coherency, and teleological drive of its
> creator, which is why it holds so much value for us.  However, I view Nature
> as the "signified" (object), not a "signifier" (subject).
>
>
John:

Well I can see how you get accused of SOMism tendencies, then, since you
seem to take this as fundamental.  "You" view it thusly.  Let me show you a
different way of viewing.  Do you live and breathe Ham?  By what means do
you draw breath?  Your lungs, right?  These are the apparatus by which you
breathe, but what about the trees that make the oxygen that you take into
your lungs?  With them, your lungs wouldn't function at all.  Therefore,
could it not be viewed differently, that trees are actually part of your
breathing apparatus?  That trees are an extension of your lungs?  The
advantage of viewing it this way, is that by extension you begin to
understand that your subject is much bigger and more interconnected with
your object than you realize at first glance.  You obviously value your
self, so how big is your self?  Wouldn't it be preferable to expand your
self?  Try a different view, is my suggestion.


Ham:

I assure you that Nature is NOT the Absolute Source.  So far as we know it
> is not even "absolute".  This is plain Existentialism -- the theory that
> Being precedes Essence which is the "final outcome" of its evolution.  So
> long as your concept of reality is based on Being instead of Essence, you
> and I will continue talking past each other.
>
>
John:

You assure me, based upon what logical grounds?  Have you ascended unto the
most high?  Have you transcended the fountains of life and encompassed all
in your view and see how things really are?

I've copped to existentialism in the past.  Not because I've studied it
extensively, but just because what I've encountered appeals to me.  Your
assertion that I am one, I'll certainly buy.  But please, just tell me, what
is the essential difference between essence and being?  If essence has no
being, then why even get all worked up about it?  Or do you think it's a
matter of which comes first, and that's your main point?

Because I don't get too wrapped up in "which came first" problems.  I'm more
concerned with what is now.  We got chickens, and we got eggs.  Deal with
those, not theoretical ideas about causation which supposedly exist in a
mythic past.  After all, "causation", "myth" and "past" are all only human
constructs that have no validity outside of human experience.

Ham:

Are you a postmodern Kantian, John?  How can our understanding of causality
> and contrariety be intuitive or a priori?  The "other factor" you're looking
> for, I think, is the universal template, or what I call 'essent-value'.
>
>
John:

I'd cop also to a great extent of "post - Kantian".  Yes indeed.   But how
do you escape much the same conundrum with "universal template'?  That
sounds like a pretty much a priori conceptualization the way you present
it.  Are we just arguing terminology for the same things, Ham?

And I'm not so much a fan of "a priori" as I am a fan of "a pryor".
Heh-heh.

John:

 You say, "The Source" like a Jedi says "The Force".  It seems
>> to me that you've just got a postulate whereby you hang all
>> your metaphysical concepts without any evidence or reasoning
>> behind it other than "well, something has to be the source."
>>
>
>
Ham:


> You bet I do!  I learned early on that you can't develop a philosophy
> without a proper foundation.


John:

Even if you have to just make something up?  I dunno, Ham.  It seems kinda
arbitrary to me.

Ham:


>  If the physical universe is your reality, then Science is your philosophy,
> Nature is your playground, and all your "truths" are empirical.  Robert
> Pirsig tried for something else -- a Quality-based idealism.  His problem
> was that he called his thesis a "metaphysics", which it is not.  Of course
> "something has to be the source".  But it's neither value nor quality which
> depend on consciousness.  Essence not only connotes "necessary" (as in 'ex
> nihilo') but the ultimate nature of that necessary "something".  So my
> philosophy is a metaphysics of Essence which incorporates the dynamics of
> existential value.
>
>

John:

Well I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm getting somewhere.  I agree
with you that Pirsig posits a Quality-based Idealism, but I fail to
understand how this isn't a metaphysics.  Did he dot every "i" and cross
every "t"?  No.  But that doesn't mean the framework is not all there for
such a fleshing out.  But then, I'm admittedly a neophyte philosopher and
perhaps there is some criteria for "metaphysics" that is not met in the
MoQ.




>  Quality and Choice are inextricably intertwined.  Where there
>> is no Choice, there is no Quality.  Perhaps Pirsig failed to
>> explicate this fully becuase it is just so darn obvious.   But you
>> can't say then, that man's choice is fundamental for the reverse
>> is also true - without Quality, there can be no Choice.  They
>> co-exist, all the way down to the quantum level and that
>> really is the whole enchilada as far as we can see.
>>
>
> I would suggest that we can't see far enough through this dark glass to
> discover what Reality is.
>
>
But we build meaning in a linear fashion, and we can intuit where our
direction is leading.  I'm content with an infinite process, as long as I
see I'm going in the right direction.


Travelin' John