[MD] Intellectual activity

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt --


 [Ham]:
> I take it that Dynamic Quality (euphemistically called "Spirit")
> is that "ineffable something" which is responsible for any or all of the
> following: aesthetic sensibility, intellectual reactions, emotional
> reactions, abductive inference, hypothesis, and (for John Lennon, at
> least) poetic inspiration.

[Platt]:
> More or less correct. DQ is the ineffable creative force.
> [snip]
> It's not unique to man. How do you explain creation at the physical and
> biological levels if not by some creative force?  Dumb luck?

No, as I've suggested in various ways before, and as Pirsig apparently
believes, the world is created in 'man's image'.  By that I mean we create
the images of physical reality by separating them out of Essence and
identifying them as the particular "things" of beingness.  The Essence that
is the ground of existence is our own, but because we are existentially
separated from it we can only sense its value in the "differentiated pieces"
of our experience.  Each finite piece (or type of being) has a value for us
that relates it to the absolute Source to which we also ultimately belong.

Therefore, is it not reasonable that the value of our finite experience
relates to the value of the undifferentiated Whole as experienced by our
estranged sensibilities?  Included in this value is the teleological or
evolutionary design of the universe which we realize as either "beautiful",
"purposeful", or "moral", depending on our psycho-somatic sensibility and
intellectual perspective.

[Platt]:
> What place, what role, what purpose does beauty have in your
> philosophy, Ham?  Is it essential :-) or is it just part of the
> interesting but unimportant side show?

Esthetic appreciation has a prominent role my value system, as it also does
in yours, Platt.  I don't limit value to Beauty, however, as I think (like
Schopenhauer) that what a lot of people call beautiful -- including
Professor Nehamas -- is what attracts them sexually, and is a carry-over of
primitive instincts that ensured the survival of the species.  Not all
esthetic experience is "beautiful".  For example, if it were not for
dissonance in music, its flow toward a final resolution would hold little
interest for us, and I'm sure that a similar principle applies to
sculptures, paintings, novels, physical equations, and (indeed) life itself.

Essentially speaking,
Ham