Re: MD Is Morality Relative?

From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Dec 08 2004 - 23:43:50 GMT

  • Next message: hampday@earthlink.net: "Re: Ham; Re: MD Is Morality Relative?"

    Dear Platt --

    You write:
    >
    > What you call Essence I call existence which equals Quality.
    >
    > Existence exists, but I can't prove it.

    No one is asking you to "prove" existence, and if you want to call existence
    "Quality", fine and dandy. I'll probably trigger a barrage of Pirsig
    quotes, but it seems to me that your equation effectively negates everything
    that's new and significant about the MOQ. We might just as well not have a
    philosophy at all. It's just so much artful poetry about existence, with no
    implicit meaning for mankind.

    I find it incredulous, after all our exchanges about the significance of the
    individual intellect, that existentialism represents your position.
    Furthermore, despite the metaphorical expressions used as substitutes for a
    formal thesis (i.e., Quality = Everything), I doubt that Mr. Pirsig would
    find the notion that Existence equals Quality metaphysically acceptable. If
    there is nothing more, where does that leave his Morality, his patterns of
    Value, his evolution to Betterness? Where is the Beauty that you so revere
    as Truth? Indeed, where is Dynamic Quality? Are they all to be dismissed
    as byproducts of existence?

    > (As for the Big Bang, something had
    > to exist to go "bang." Cosmologists call it a singularity.)

    Call it what you like, but it means Creation. Existence had a prior source:
    it was created. Is there any escaping this? We do not know if it is
    infinitely boundless or if it is even infinite in space. We do know on best
    authority that it had a beginning, however, and is therefore not absolute.
    So, I'll return the question by the absolutist Platt Holden that started me
    on this kick: "Will someone please explain why the word "absolute" is
    considered to be anathema?"

    Now, it would appear, I have to start all over again.

    As you see, we go around in circles!

    Essentially still trying,
    Ham

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