[MD] Ham on Esthesia

[gav]

> hey ham, pardon the cut-in,

i am struck by the similarities twixt you and pirsig,
not only philosophically but, after browsing your
site, historically.

i am also a biology and chemistry graduate....

anyway i think i agree (for now; i will finish your
thesis and come back to the issue) with platt and mark
that you have arrived independently at a 'quality'
conclusion.

ham:
> > But I'll try to show you where I think "sensible
> awareness" differs from
> proprioceptive (body status) experience of the
> "sitting on a hot stove"
> variety.   (That's a "direct experience", all right;
> but it's an experience
> we can't have without the stove.)

gav: pirsig used the stove example because it was so
obvious, undeniable and uniform. it is the blunt end
of the quality spectrum. subtler sensibilities, as the
term suggests, are less amenable to such simple and
universal identification. we all know the experience
of a sharp pain surprise; we are all aware to *varying
degrees* of the more subtle sensibilities like beauty,
truth, love, compassion etc. pirsig was trying to find
a *common denominator* in this part of his exposition.

> Awareness includes more subtle sensibilities than
> pain.  It encompasses his
> response to and attraction for beauty, his yearning
> for truth and a cosmic
> connection, his need to master and enhance his
> environment, his compassion
> for or resentment of other individuals -- all of
> which depend on an
> objective otherness.

i have to pull you up here ham. pirsig is very clear
that the 'objective otherness' is ontologically post
the immediate non-dual experience of quality. 

ham:   Then there's the intellectual
> or conceptual faculty -- 
> dealing with math, logic and physical laws, which
> are also abstracted from
> his cognizance of otherness.  The very sense of
> being-in-the-world cannot
> exist in a vacuum; it requires the cognizance of a
> structured, objectified
> world.

gav: even intellectually there is a non-dual state and
it is in this state that the perception of
mathematical elegance etc occurs.

ham: > In a nutshell, my contention is twofold:
> 
> 1.  Epistemologically, we are all sentient subjects
> of an objective reality.

gav: i think i take issue here too ham. depends what
we mean by 'knowledge'. quality is knowledge; infact
quality is the only *sure* knowledge there is. and
again, sorry to repeat, quality is prior to the
snetient subject and objective reality.

ham: 2.  Logically, neither Quality nor Value can be
the
> source of that reality.

gav: depends on your metaphysics ham. In MOQ
quality/value is logically the source of conditioned
reality.

ham: To account for the appearance of differentiated
> existence, three
> explanations are usually offered:
> 
> 1.  It was always here.
> 2.  It was created from a primary source.
> 3.  It created itself from nothing.
> 
> I maintain that #3 is illogical, and that #1 and #2
> are logically consistent
> with each other.

gav: i think all three are logically consistent with
each other. if the primary source is Quality, and
Quality is no-thing, and Quality creates manifest
reality in the wake of Quality events....and of course
Quality is infinite: no beginning/end.

ham:> Furthermore, while the primary source may be
> conceived as having properties
> in common with, or exceptional to, those of the
> experienced world,
> application of Occam's razor and the logic of
> luminaries throughout history
> almost uniformly point to a single, undifferentiated
> Creator.  The simplest
> form of such a primary source is the "prime" form:
> Absolute Oneness.  But
> that Oneness must also have the potentiality to
> create; that is to say, it
> must be an "essence" rather than an "attribute" of
> something else.  There is
> no something else for Essence.  It is the
> self-contained "not-other".

gav: that oneness is the Tao: a process. because it is
a process it has a 'momentum' of sorts; perhaps that
is one way to envisage its creative potential?
 to me 'essence' points to that common element in all
creation; that we are all ultimately, as is everything
else, cut of the same cloth. again we come back to the
infinite, by whatever name we choose to call it.

i am also sympathetic to the existential project and
find value in the motto: 'existence precedes essence'.

the 'soul', for instance, could be a synonym for
'essence', and i believe, like monty python, that the
soul is brought into a more and more complete state of
being through a process of guided self-observation. in
other words, we are all of the one 'soul' which is to
a greater or lesser extent realized by the individual.
through a process of self-examination it is perhaps
possible for the individual to identify (or lose their
identity, however you look at it) with the infinite
completely.
 
ham:> Unfortunately, for all his alleged overcoming of
> duality, Mr. Prisig has not
> shown us how it is supposed to benefit the
> individual.

gav: well i have to differ once more. it benefits the
individual because they lose the conceptual illusion
of separation from the world, each other, nature, the
universe. amongst other things.

cheers ham
gav


		
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