[MD] Awareness and consciousness in the MOQ

[Ant McWatt]

Ant McWatt commented April 9th:

> Not putting values ahead of subjects and objects in the empirical train of
> events wasn't a new idea?
>
> Then adding in LILA that these values are evolving and can be ordered in a
> moral framework?
>
> Where else have you read those two particular ideas (pre-Pirsig)?


Mark ("the man who is willing to learn"!),

You said:

> With your point about value before SO.  You are stating that since
> Descarte came up with his thinking being proof of self it was not
> discussed before that.  Well, just to use Descartian words, I will
> say: "I am therefore I think."  

That's an interesting twist on Descartes' original quote but I'm not sure that helps your case that none of Pirsig's ideas were original!

For a start, Descartes' original assertion is assuming too much with this "I" business.  You quoted a number of mystic texts to me such as the Tao Te Ching and the Emerald Tablet.  From my reading of such texts, it becomes apparent that the best you can say with certainty is "Something thinks, therefore something is"; not "I think, therefore I am".  There's nothing personal or impersonal in immediate experience; no subject; no object.  Your version of Descartes' famous quote is still adding SOM constructions 
which aren't given in "immediate experience".  Strictly speaking, the 
self - the "I" - is fundamentally a good idea - not a certainty.

Moreover, To simply turn round Descartes original words in 2012 to read "I am 
therefore I think" is 38 years too late (i.e. it is 38 years after ZMM 
was first published) even if this metaphysical formulation is indeed (and I can't see how it is) putting "value before any 
SO creation".   

To return to my central point in my last post to you, the "Problem of Value" (which was basically solved by Pirsig in his placing of "values ahead of subjects and objects in the empirical train of events")  has only existed since thinkers have tried to assign values within a version of Descartes' 1641 SOM framework and realised that there are metaphysical problems assigning values as either subjective or objective.  This is why I stated that Thomas Aquinas, the Buddha, Parmenides, the Emerald Tablet and Pythagoras were irrelevant as far as the two original ideas of Pirsig that I referred you to in my post of April 9th.  To show me Pirsig wasn't original, you'd need to quote me a published author between 1641 and early 1974, that had said that subjects and objects are a type of value together with the postulation that values are the fundamental groundstuff of the world. 


Ant McWatt commented April 9th:

> Then adding in LILA that these values are evolving and can be ordered in a moral framework?

And as far as the cosmological evolution of values is concerned, you'd need to find a writer between the late nineteenth century to 1991 (i.e. the era when the theory of evolution became established), who'd already had the idea (and published it!) to discount the above assertion.  The Tao Te Ching - which you referred me to in regard to the above assertion - has a lot wisdom in it.  However, it doesn't mention the (cosmological) evolution of value patterns!
 
By the way, if Pirsig didn't write anything original and what he said was already in other philosophies and philosophers, why are bothering to examine Pirsig any further on this Discussion group?  For surely, you're not going to learn anything here that you don't already know!  :-)

I look forward to reading Kierkegaard.

Best wishes,

Ant.


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Mark Smith stated April 10th 2012:

With your point about value before SO.  You are stating that since
Descarte came up with his thinking being proof of self it was not
discussed before that.  Well, just to use Descartian words, I will
say: "I am therefore I think."  If this does not put value before any
SO creation I do not know what does.  This awareness is part of a
perennial philosophy which was well written about by Huxley.  This
value before SO goes way back to before the Egyptians.  It was the
Egyptians that recognized that power came from giving things names
(creating objects).  So you need to go back at least that far to see
what has been done since then, in my opinion.
 
That values can be ordered and form a framework is what Taoism is all
about.  Lau Tsu and others used their writings to teach politicians
and rulers about morality.  Perhaps you have not read much from the
Taoist body of work, but it is all there.
 
What Pirsig has done is present these things in Western Tongue.  He
even says as much, read the book.
 
However, perhaps you means something completely different when saying
that value comes before SO, and a moral framework.  Perhaps you can
educate me so that I can speak with your vernacular.  I am willing to
learn.
 
Cheers,
Mark
 


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