[MD] Pressed Ham

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Stephen --


> It seems to me that your Essence and Pirsig's Quality
> are pretty much the exact same thing, but after that you
> two differ on how to divide it.  Having a monism at the
> top such as Essence or Quality seems to set you two
> apart from other philosophers.  I haven't been in this
> forum very long, so I haven't seen all the discussion
> about your philosophy.  However I think your posts are
> valuable here because of the Essence/Quality connection.

Thanks for being the first to report back with an opinion.  You have stated
the similarity of the two philosophies quite well: they both posit a
non-materialistic, experiential (phenomenalistic) reality.  This is what
initially intrigued me about Pirsig's Quality while researching Value for my
on-line thesis.  Most ontologies, including scientific philosophy, are based
on being as the fundamental "essence".  Pirsig and I both felt the need to
dispel this notion.

My biggest problem with the MoQ is that an aesthetic attribute like Quality
does not logically support a primary source which, for me, is essential.  Of
course Pirsig doesn't define DQ as a primary source; he describes it as "the
primary empirical reality".  In other words, the MoQ offers no transcendent
reality; it is basically an existential ontology with Quality replacing
Being as the primary reality.  Pirsig has reinforced this concept by
suggesting that self-consciousness could not have developed prior to a
certain stage of societal evolution.

Also, the parsing of existence into levels and patterns is arbitrary at
best.  My objection here is not the impreciseness of the divisions, but the
inference that subject/object duality is "overcome" by simply fusing the
world's inorganic, biological, and intellectual components.  This is
Pantheism -- the doctrine that reality comprises a single essence of which
all things are modes or members.  I maintain that Essence is not the
"all-encompassing" but the immutable One, and that most of the "patterns"
that Pirsig describes, such as Intellect, Consciousness, and Quality (or
Value), are relative to the observing subject, as opposed to being innate in
the universe.

> On a different note, on the subject of Individual vs.
> Collective, to anyone who is interested I commented on
> this topic a long time ago in my forum essay:
>
> David Morey had a concept of "Freedom" in his essay.
> I thought this was ambiguous and proposed two different
> kinds of freedom: "Individual Freedom" and "System
> Potential."  Replace "System Potential" with "Collective
> Potential" and I think this gets closer to what we've been
> talking about.  I proposed that "Collective Potential"
> increased from Inorganic to Intellectual, while "Individual
> Freedom" decreases:
>
> "A society, a form of Social Quality, has more potential
> than an individual man, a form of Biological Quality.
> Each individual man is constrained by society, usually
> by laws.  America's laws must conform to the ideals of
> life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which are a
> form of Intellectual Quality.  These ideals have more
> potential than the laws themselves.  For example, the
> Bill of Rights, part of American law, is specific to this
> country but life and liberty are ideals embraced by
> many societies."

I agree that laws determine the morality of the group, but I do not see its
relation to Biology.  Nor do I see the greater "potential" of the collective
society.  The distinguishing characteristic of existence is that everything
is differentiated, and that applies as well to man, the sentient core of the
system.  The unit of human awareness is a microcosmic point relative to
infinite time and space.  Essentially it is a nothingness that becomes aware
by deriving its essential value incrementally from the experience of the
Whole.  All ideas originate in the mind of an individual, regardless of what
that individual may borrow from a body of existing knowledge.  All human
actions are driven by the values realized by the individual, regardless of
whether one individual inspires others to follow his lead.  To speak of
mankind's achievements only in the collective sense demeans the creative
value of the individual.

Again, I appreciate your support of my "existence" here, Stephen, and await
further comment from the senior members of this community who will determine
the extent of my heresy in this forum.

Best regards,
Ham