[MD] Metaphysics

[Ham Priday]

Hi David --


> Ham to Marsha:
>> A true metaphysics, in my opinion, is a cogent concept that
>> explains the origin and purpose of existence as it relates to
>> ultimate Reality.
>
> In essence then you are taking on the internationally renown
> uber-reductionist scientist Richard Dawkins who in his magum
> opus: "The Ancestor's Tale- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of
> Evolution," we read:
>
> "Ernst Mayr, distinguished elder statesman of twentieth-century
> evolution, has blamed the delusion of discontinuity-under its
> philosophical name of Essentialism-as the main reason why
> evolutionary understanding came so late in human history.
> Plato, whose philosophy can be seen as an inspiration for
> Essentialism, believed that actual things are imperfect versions
> of an ideal archtype of their kind......."
>
> He concludes this background info with a this single sentence paragraph:
>
> "There is no such thing as essence." ...
>
> Good luck with that one Ham.

Why should I have to contend with Dawkins, a biologist who (like many here) 
is obsessed with the notion that Creationism somehow has a stranglehold on 
scientific investigation?  Of what metaphysical significance is the fact 
that Dawkins took four pages of his postmodern Pilgrim's Progress to argue 
that "there is no essence"?  Better that he had used that space to explain 
why there is no nothingness.  Or, how it is that we are free to believe in a 
primary source or not.

I am neither a creationist nor a platonist.  Plato believed that "essence" 
was the ideal form or cause of a thing, apart from its being.  His protégé 
Aristotle suggested that the ideal is to be found in the thing's being 
itself, which led to the plurality of "essences".

The Essence of my philosophy is the uncreated Absolute Source from which 
relational existence is experientially derived.  So Essentialism has very 
little in common with these ontologies.

At least Robert Pirsig demonstrated that experienced Value is the 
metaphysical ground of existence.
On that we both agree.

Best regards,
Ham


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