[MD] Ham on Esthesia

[Squonkonguitar at aol.com]

Gav: 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.
 
Mark: Hello Gav.
I am not at all sure Ham has arrived in the same place as Pirsig  in ZMM, if 
that is what you mean here?
I've been reading Ham's essay and it looks like he is constructing a  
Dualistic philosophy:
 
 
Ham begins by insists Human experience is the very thing we must concern  
ourselves with if we are to escape the horrors of runaway technology.
He presents a scientific construct of experience and culture then  rejects it 
in favour of the abstracted something/nothingness found in all  aspects of 
Human experience.
 
 
Working with the thing in itself notion of essence Ham prioritises  
subjectivity.
Ham tries to avoid infinite regress (subject can't be without object)  by 
insisting nothingness does the work of generating the subject/object division  - 
but essence was there first.
 
 
Logically, this can be restated as the filling of Nothingness by something  
(essence), which means there can't be nothingness anyway. A serious  flaw.


Thus, the basis for Ham's philosophy is not Essence even though he refers  to 
his thought as essentialist.
 

Rather, he explicitly states that opposites are the basis of reality:  
Opposites, or complimentary poles are found in all Human experience and enquiry;  he 
even cites electromagnetic polarity (tautologically) as an example while  
avoiding quark flavours of up, down, strange, charm, etc.
 
Any claim beyond that has to be deduced and the logic fails.
 
It doesn't work for me.
 
Love,
Mark