From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Nov 03 2004 - 07:24:37 GMT
From: Ham Priday
To: Platt Holden and Mark Steven Heyman
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 2:15 AM
Subject: MD Where does quality reside?
Platt quotes Pirsig, as follows:
> "Biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic
> forces at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static
> inorganic forces at a superatomic level. They do this by selecting
> superatomic mechanisms in which a number of options are so evenly balanced
> that a weak Dynamic force can tip the balance one way or another. The
> particular atom that the weak Dynamic subatomic forces have seized as
> their primary vehicle is carbon.
>
> "What the Dynamic force had to invent in order to move up the molecular
> level and stay there was a carbon molecule that would preserve its limited
> Dynamic freedom from inorganic laws and at the same time resist
> deterioration back to simple compounds of carbon again. A study of nature
> shows the Dynamic force was not able to do this but got around the problem
> by inventing two molecules: a static molecule able to resist abrasion,
> heat, chemical attack and the like; and a Dynamic one, able to preserve
> the subatomic indeterminacy at a molecular level and "try everything" in
> the ways of chemical combination."
>
> You may if you wish consider Pirsig's description so much poetic license
> and thus not the way it actually happened. If so, the MOQ would be just
> another bedtime story.
Yes, it is "poetic license". It is also the resort of a philosopher whose
theory otherwise defies reason.
We imagine that existential reality could be chaotic randomness. But by any
empirical standard it is not. In a space/time sense, existence is the
ground of our "beingness"; therefore its dynamics must support individual
cognizance through a process that we call "evolution". The empiricists with
no belief in a primary source can only explain the purposiveness of Nature
as an innate force of substance. Thus, they try to present to us the idea
that "dynamic forces at a subatomic level discover [invent?] stratagems for
overcoming huge static inorganic forces at a superatomic level." This is
nonsense, of course, for intellect is subjective and does not exist in atoms
or molecules at any "level".
I credit empiricists like Pirsig who realize that the Nature embodies a
teleological principle. But the theory that "dynamic force" (i.e.,
teleological purpose) resides in matter is a myth. An empirical ontology
must account for the creation of intelligent life on the foundation of
inert substance. Any other explanation is seen as "creationism" -- the
dreaded ideology that puts the empiricists in league with religion. So
their solution is to impute "intellect" to matter. This not only goes
against the grain of common sense; it is illogical and metaphysically
unsupportable.
The truth is so transparently obvious, it's a wonder that they can avoid it.
Pirsig and the empiricists say that matter must possess an intellectual
component so that the sentient individual may exist. This reverses the
concept of a subjective reality. Creation is the finite individuation of
Essence. The principle involved here is that the subject exists so that it
may experience the value of its object. Existence does not support us; we
support existence by experiencing an "other" that represents the Essence
lost to us at creation. All the complex and wondrous attributes we apply to
existence are no more than our valuistic intellection of Essence. How
simple this ontology is as a concept; yet how difficult it is to express
empirically!
I envy the Eastern philosophers who rely on meditation rather than dialectic
to reveal the truth of their belief systems. Granting "purposiveness" to
Quality as an alternative to granting divinity to Man simply doesn't work as
a metaphysical thesis. Perhaps we need to replace empiricism with a new
epistemology in Western culture, since we seem incapable of communicating
such transcendental ideas in any meaningful or conclusive language.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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