Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:01:08 +0100
Hi Keith and LS:
Two more "high quality" posts! (March 1.) To take up your challenge in
Part II -- What justification (do) you have for believing Pirsig's
identity
quality = reality? -- I offer the following *rationalizations* that are,
as
you say, necessary to getting what are essentially mystic ideas across
to
someone.
The Gotcha Proof: You can't deny that reality is value without asserting
a
value. Example: Did I hear you say "bull" when I claimed reality is
value?
Do you think you're right? Do you think being right is good? Gotcha.
The Living Proof: You can't deny that to live (maintain reality)
requires
assumptions about what is good. You have to act to live. Action
presupposes
choice, choice presupposes purpose and purpose presupposes value.
Examples:
It's good to keep your eyes on the road while driving. It's better to
chew
gum than smoke.
The Something from Nothing Proof: The basic question for philosophy is,
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" I know of only three
rational
options, each based on an unprovable premise: 1) God, 2) accident and 3)
ethical requirement. God is the religious premise, accident the
scientific
premise and ethical requirement the MoQ premise.
No need to elaborate on the God premise--God as the First Cause.
Literature
is full of that argument. The accident premise fails by
self-contradiction:
events fall into causation patterns for no cause whatsoever. The ethical
requirement premise has at least something going for it. Its good to be
alive. A good universe creates life. To cause such a universe to be, an
ethical cause can be assumed. (In MoQspeak, the universe prefers
precondition Good.)
At this point, all rationalizations end and infinite regress takes over.
Who made God? Who set accidents in motion? Who created the ethical
cause?
All logical "truth" eventually winds up here, at infinity. The American
novelist, John Steinbeck, said it best:
"The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words
of
science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little
'Why?'"
So we come to my Final Proof: Ultimately, the only thing that stops
infinite regress and answers the question, "What's true?" is one's own
innate sense of Quality. It stops when an individual (whether cleric,
scientist or philosopher) decides for himself for whatever reason
(explanatory power, simplicity, elegance, coherence, correspondence,
consensus), "That's a good truth."
Platt
Catch 45.. All rules have exceptions.
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