[MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments

[Ham Priday]

Platt and SA --


 [Platt previously]:
> I've always claimed that the intellect is individual,
> not social, and have even advocated changing Pirsig's
> intellectual level to the "individual level."

[SA]:
> Yes,  it is a positive step.

[Platt]:
> You are the first to agree with my proposal.
> Welcome aboard!

Platt, my friend, I may not quality as an MoQ acolyte, but you must know
that I have always challenged the notion that Intellect is something apart
from the individual.  So far as I am aware, unless you include Donald
Hoffman's assertion that "consciousness and its contents are all that
exists," Robert Pirsig is the only non-theistic philosopher who has
postulated an extracorporeal intellect.

Since having an intellect presupposes having consciousness, I attribute both
of these functions to individual awareness.  However, I do reserve the term
"Sensibility" in its absolute sense for Essence.  I think we have to make a
distinction between what is sensed (or made-aware) by an organism from what
constitutes the primary source.  And, since we can't define the latter,
except as the Not-other, it is my theory that Essence encompasses absolute
Sensibility, however that integration may be conceived in human terms.

Therefore, if Pirsig regards DQ as the primary source (which has never been
made clear to me), he would have to decide whether Quality is "sensible".
Perhaps he has already circumvented this question by using Intellect in
place of Sensibility.  If so, he would be taking on traditional metaphysics
and the positivists alike, not to mention common understanding of what these
words mean.

But, yes, you have my full support in arguing for an "individual level" -- 
or "individual self", which is even better.  For me, existence is the
"individualization" of Essence from the infinitesimal perspective of an
other (the self).  In order to have this perspective, conscious awareness is
actualized as a subject whose existence is its object.  (I know that SOM
duality is abhored by the MoQers, but there is no escaping it in the
experienced world.)

After voicing my agreement on this issue, I note that you and SA then
proceed to contradict it.

SA says:
> Yet, I would add what the individual intellectualizes
> is not necessarily only in the mind of the individual.

Platt responds:
> If I read you right, you agree with Scott and me that
> mind is not confined to man's brain. Rather, the brain
> accesses mind that is infused in all things and exists
> everywhere at once.

So we're back to the notion of a collective mind, which might as well be
Pirsig's Intellect, and once again I have to ask why you're bothering to
push for intellect as individual.

SA then tries to justify intellect as a "mirror of life" (which Platt
prefers to call "mirror of the heavens") with a DQ influx of "becoming":

> I say become, due to the influx of DQ that would take
> intellect into a much fuller realization of the overall quality
> that is.  This DQ influx I have argued stabilizes intellect
> in a quality world that is not only human fashioned,
> but is non-human thought, too.  Thereby we realize in
> a quality world, a world that is not just a human view,
> but a world that includes participation of stars, squirrels,
> and all else here.

Platt injects:

> Yes, and especially a world that includes the participation
> of beauty, betterness and perfection.  Pirsig hints at this
> higher world that you and I agree exists (along with Plato
> and a few other philosophers not to mention religious
> scholars) ...

Come on now, folks.  Isn't this "higher/quality world" you're both waxing so
poetic about really the Source, Creator, Essence (take your choice) of
existential reality?  You can't straddle two realities.  If you exist you
are an "existent" in awe of Essence as otherness.  Eckhart said: "Take it
for granted that what you look for with God has no essential value, whatever
it may be, whether profit, or reward, or spirituality, or whatever.  [Using
God] you are looking for nothing and that is why you find nothing."

With you (essentially),
Ham