[MD] Essentialism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Hi Laramie --


[L]:
> The human perspective is the only perspective there is.
> It doesn't make sense to propose a nonhuman perspective.

So very true.  The human being -- individuated (proprietary) awareness --IS
the perspective of actualized reality.  PA is really a "valuistic"
perspective; it's the intellect that converts value to beingness and makes
being aware.  The experience of being is "things in existence" and is
objective.  Sensibility of value is proprietary to the individual and is
subjective.  Together they provide an extrinsic perspective of the essential
Source.

[H]:
> The question as to whether Creation is a "necessary"
> contingency for God is also meaningless, because
> Creation (i.e., existence) is an empirical fact, hence
> is included in the timeless absolute.  The fact that
> existence itself is an "actualized" contingency does
> not make God contingent (dependent) upon it.

 [L]:
> The world is not an empirical fact without awareness of it.
> In order for awareness, there has to be something to be
> aware of.  Think about it.

Also true.  I've said this many times.  But the capacity (or potentiality)
for awareness must be independent of the Source.  It is what I referred to
before as "pure awareness" (PPA), which one could define as the locus of
conscious awareness or, simply, self-awareness.  It is the screen upon which
the differentiated images of reality appear.  We define "facts" based on the
interrelation of these images as perceived by the intellect.  Since the
images have an objective foundation in physical reality, they establish what
we call universal truth.

 [H]:
> Finally, "perfect knowing" is absolute sensibility which
> is undivided and not subject to the conditions of finitude.
> Knowing is the incremental, finite differentiation of
> Absolute Oneness performed by man's intellect.
> Sensibility is indistinguishable from "knowledge" in the
> identity of God.

[L]:
> Static, static, stuff, Ham.  But I could be wrong.

Static is a Pirsigian construct.  Actually, our perspective of reality is
that of a system in constant transition -- definitely dynamic.  I could be
wrong too (says Platt); but if I am, my experience has deceived me.  And so
has the experience of biologists, physicists, and cosmologists who are the
source of most of my factual knowledge.

[L]:
> In the "Guidebook to ZAMM" there is mention that
> it might be worthwhile to compare Hartshorne and
> Whitehead's "God" to Pirisig's Quality, and I've been
> researching for a thesis on Aurobindo and Rand for
> quite a while, so I was happy to find the monograph.
> Glad you liked it too!

You might want to check out this link for excerpts from Whitehead's "Process
and Reality": www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadgodandtheworld.htm

Here is some of what Whitehead wrote:

"The notion of God as the "unmoved mover" is derived from Aristotle, at
least so far as Western thought is concerned.  The notion of God as
"emi-nently real" is a favourite doctrine of Christian theology.  The
combination of the two into the doctrine of an aboriginal, eminently real,
transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose
imposed will it obeys, is the fallacy which has infused tragedy into the
histories of Christianity and of Maho-metanism."

"Viewed as primordial, he is the unlimited conceptual realization of the
absolute wealth of potentiality.  In this aspect, he is not before all
creation, but with all creation.  But, as primordial, so far is he from
"eminent reality," that in this abstraction he is "deficiently actual"-and
this in two ways.  His feelings are only conceptual and so lack the fulness
of actuality.  Secondly, conceptual feelings, apart from complex integration
with physical feelings, are devoid of consciousness in their subjective
forms.  Thus, when we make a distinction of reason, and consider God in the
abstraction of a primordial actuality, we must ascribe to him neither
fulness of feeling, nor consciousness.  He is the unconditioned actuality of
conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that, by reason of this
primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects
to the process of creation.  His unity of conceptual operations is a free
creative act, untrammelled by reference to any particular course of things.
It is deflected neither by love, nor by hatred, for what in fact comes to
pass. The particularities of the actual world presuppose it; while it merely
presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which
it is the primordial exemplification. The primordial nature of God is the
acquirement by creativity of a primordial character.

"His conceptual actuality at once exemplifies and establishes the categoreal
conditions.  The conceptual feelings, which compose his primordial nature,
exemplify in their subjective forms their mutual sensitivity and their
subjective unity of subjective aim.  These subjective forms are valuations
determining the relative relevance of eternal objects for each occasion of
actuality.  A quotation from Aristotle's Metaphysics expresses some
analogies to, and some differences from, this line of thought:

       "And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is
something which moves without being moved, being eternal
substance, and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of
thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The
primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the
apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the
primary object of rational wish. But desire is consequent on opinion
rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting-point.
And thought is moved by the object of thought, and one of the two
columns of opposites is in itself the object of thought; . . ."

"Aristotle had not made the distinction between conceptual feelings and the
intellectual feelings which alone involve consciousness.  But if "conceptual
feeling," with its subjective form of valuation, be substituted for
"thought," "thinking," and "opinion," in the above quotation, the agreement
is exact."

I suggest that Whitehead's concept of "conceptual feeling" equates to what
I've called "undifferentiated sensibility," leaving "its subjective form of
valuation" to the creature.  In fact, Whitehead goes on to say:

"One side of God's nature is constituted by his conceptual experience. This
experience is the primordial fact in the world, limited by no actuality
which it presupposes.  It is therefore infinite, devoid of all negative
prehensions.  This side of his nature is free, complete, primordial,
eternal, actually deficient, and unconscious.  The other side originates
with physical experience derived from the temporal world, and then acquires
integration with the primordial side.  It is determined, incomplete,
consequent, 'everlasting,' fully actual, and conscious.  His necessary
goodness expresses the determination of his consequent nature.

"Conceptual experience can be infinite, but it belongs to the nature of
physical experience that is finite.  An actual entity in the temporal world
is to be conceived as originated by physical experience with its process of
completion motivated by consequent, conceptual experience initially derived
from God.  God is to be conceived as originated by conceptual experience
with his process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experience,
initially derived from the temporal world."
        --[Chapter II of Part V, "Final Interpretation," of Process and
Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, New York, Macmillan, 1929]

Whitehead wants to justify the "goodness" of God for the same reason that
Pirsig wants to justify the "universality of goodness".  The statement "His
necessary goodness expresses the determination of his consequent nature"
seems to prove my point.  What "necessary goodness"?  What is the
metaphysical basis for Whitehead's premise that goodness is a necessary
attribute of the creation, or Pirsig's premise that morality is innate in
the universe?  God [Essence] knows no distinctions.  Goodness is for MAN to
discover, along with Badness.  I submit that such evaluations are only
possible in an amoral universe in which man is the autonomous subject.

Think on that, Laramie, and tell me why it doesn't make sense.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Ham