From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Apr 15 2005 - 06:59:06 BST
Dear Ham,
You wrote 14 Apr 2005 20:48:01 -0400:
> > 2) 'man is the only animal equipped to contemplate his fate and
> discriminate
> > among life's values'
>
> What is your problem with that? Do you believe there's another known
> creature capable of contemplating its fate?
I have no problem with 2). That's why I gave no comment on it further on in
my 14 Apr 20:50 +0200 e-mail to you. Until the point where I stated
> > I'm afraid I have to question your reasoning.
I was only asking:
> > Do I miss something essential when I summarize your essay at
> > www.essentialism.net/balance.htm in the following quotes?
Can you answer that question, please?
So I [snip] your additions & clarifications until
> > I'm afraid I have to question your reasoning.
Re my comments on quote 1) from your esay you replied:
> I stand by my statement that the survival of some aspect of
> propietary awareness heads the list of man's values.
That depends on your (individualistic/collectivistic, among others) culture
and your spirituality. For 84% of the Americans this may well be true. In
Europe the majority would be less, I guess. In the rest of the world and
especially in South and East-Asia (half of the world population)
collectivistic thinking and non-Western types of spirituality (e.g. wanting
to escape the 'wheel of karma') reduce this attachment to individual person
traits to a minority, I guess. Has Harris ever conducted a global poll?
I your statement that 'the value of survival beyond death is the most
important value for mankind' meant to be descriptive or normative?
If factual, it is certainly true for most Americans, but not a good basis
for philosophy. The majority of Americans also believed their leaders that
Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to them. No wonder that they would
like to survive beyond death with such a tendency towards collective
paranoia. (-:
If normative, I don't agree, and statistics are no help proving me wrong.
Re my comments on quote 3) from your esay you replied:
> "There is no such thing as a collective
> brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement
> reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon
many
> individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the
> process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a
> meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach."
I agree. But individual brains and thoughts can identify with collective
traits and/or accomplishments to a degree that disproves your statement that
it natural for them to choose individual survival beyond death over
collective survival beyond their individual death.
Re my comments on quote 4) from your esay you replied:
> in the end, man in every culture is an autonomous agent.
That seems a normative rather than a descriptive statement to me. How do you
support it?
You continue your comments re 4):
> It is a metaphysical principle of Essentialism that
> reality is anthropocentric and that the individual is the locus of
> existential reality. It is the individual who "believes"; a society
> collectively only reflects the belief of its individual constituents.
Sure, reality (= experience) is anthropocentric and the individual is the
locus of experience. It is my belief (i.e. I trust) that individual
experience has a 'divine' core, however, and that experience of 'divine
guidance', if one is open to experiencing that core, connects everyone and
everything.
Re my comments on quote 5) from your esay you replied:
> Insofar as transcendence is concerned, proprietary sensibility is the
> essential factor.
For me the essential factor is transcendence of individual identification.
That's not a descriptive statement and not even a normative one (in the
sense that I pretend it to have value for others as well). It is a statement
of what gives Meaning to my life. There's no way to prove it, I think. I can
only hope that it appeals to other people's sense of spirituality.
Re my comments on quote 7) and 8) from your esay you replied:
> "trust in fate" is a feeble substitute for philosophical
> belief. If a philosophy cannot address the question of death, it is
> incapable of providing meaning for the life-experience. Would you not
> agree that this is a shortcoming of the MoQ?
The MoQ as I understand it perfectly fits my way of providing meaning for my
life-experience.
> Appreciate the opportunity, Wim.
Yes, very much so, too.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 15 2005 - 06:58:20 BST