[MD] Intellectual activity

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, 

> [Platt previously]:
> > 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.

If the world was created in "man's image," what of existence of the 
world before man came upon the scene? Your description sounds 
suspiciously like Idealism. As for "differentiated pieces" as being the 
ONLY thing we can sense as having value, I refer to Ant's lengthy post 
to Scott dated  6 May in which he describes the value we directly 
experience of the "aesthetic continuum" whereby the figure and ground 
are known simultaneously without differentiation. (Gestalt Theory). 

> 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.

Beauty is a sensibility that overcomes estrangement and finitude IMO.
 
> [Platt previously]:
> > 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.

Yes. Beauty extends far beyond sexual attraction.


> 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.

Yes, the ugly (dissonance) is sometimes deliberately fostered by 
artists to make the resolution all the more beautiful by contrast. 
 
Best regards,
Platt