[MD] Intuitive Reasoning?

[Ham Priday]

Gav, Ian --

Gav said:

> At the most correct and fundamental level
> there is no tree and there is no me, just experience.

Ham:
> Gav is right, up to the point of adding "just
> experience".  There is no experience without both
> the "me" and the "tree".

Gav:
> Yes there would be: experience of no-thing, awareness
> of awareness itself, the goal of transcendental
> meditation etc.

Since "no-thing" is nothing, how can we experience it?  The only way we
experience nothingness in a differentiated world is by the absence of
things.  As I understand TM, the idea is to avoid the distraction of
"things" so as to realize Oneness, not nothing.

Gav, previously:
> At the most correct and fundamental level there is
> no tree and there is no me, just experience.

Ham said:
> We don't live at a fundamental level.

Gav:
> Yes we do. when we perceive quality dynamically;
> momentarily, at least, fundamental reality is revealing itself.

This is where you and I disagree.  For me the fundamental level is ultimate
reality, which is undivided.  Pirsig calls it DQ.  No differentiated entity
can participate in what is undivided; therefore, we can only conceive it
abstractly, or perceive it indirectly as its value to us.  For man to
"experience" Oneness directly, he would have to be this undivided Source
[Essence].  Clearly, he is not.  In my philosophy, the self is a negation of
Essence -- literally a nothingness.

Ham, previously:
> Physical existence is not fundamental; we live
> in a differentiated reality where each subject and
> each object is divided from every other.

Gav:
> *We do this ham*; not 'reality'. we learn to do it and
> we learn it long enough and well enough that it seems
> that it was always that way. but .... when you are baby
> you ain't dividing reality up into subjects and objects.
> when you are a baby your experience is undivided.
> you have to learn conditional subject/object reality.
> conditional reality is socially constructed.

The fetus lives in what might be termed a solipsistic environment.  But the
post-partum
infant is already distinguishing faces, bodies, and other objects.  I don't
know when socialization sets in, but I would suspect this would occur much
later.  I think Pirsig has made too much of the societal factors in human
development.

Gav:
> don't know what you mean by 'collectivizing'. didn't
> use that word myself. and i would never demean the
> individual self....quite the opposite: wish there were
> a lot more of them around. most folk are still
> operating the 'ego' program which is a social
> perspective. individuals operate according to reason
> and DQ.

Since I don't operate by DQ, and I certainly don't get my reasoning from it,
I suppose you consider me one of those "egoistic folk".  The reasoning I do
to form conclusions is my own.  The perspective I have of the world is
proprietary to me, as are all of the values that I sense.  I may have
learned from "social structuring", but I am not a collective entity.
Neither is experience, intellect, or value.

Gav asks (again):
> Ham do you think we live in a deterministic universe?
> Are you a mechanist?

I am about as far from a mechanist as I am from motorcycles.  There is an
order to the universe which you or I do not control.  To the finite mind,
things arise, change, and disappear from existence.  Because the mode of
experience is diminsional, we see things in transition as a series of events
in time and we assume a cause and effect for every event.  That intellectual
construct is determinism; however, it doesn't affect our freedom as
individuals nor our uncreated Source.

Ham, previously:
> You see, Gav, your ontology makes Consciousness the
> primary source, not Quality.

Gav:
> Two sides of the same coin ham. quality needs
> awareness of it to be.

If Quality does not exist without "awareness of it", Pirsig's MoQ is in deep
doo-doo.
In my philosophy, Essence is not dependent on otherness of any kind.
Essence is defined as the absolute 'not-other'.

Ham, previously:
> My explanation is that man's perennial struggle with
> existence has an ultimate purpose --namely, to make being aware.

Gav:
> All being is aware. otherwise it wouldn't be.

I would like to see your rationale for that assertion.

Ham:
> Human life is a "working out" of values by an autonomous
> agent in pursuit of its own excellence.  We are each granted
> the freedom to choose our own values.

Gav asks:
> Who is granting what here?

We, you and I, are the created agents of the uncreated Source from which all
our values are derived.  This is the cosmogeny that Pirsig has failed to
develop.  He's "overcome" duality, cause and effect, and individualism.  But
he can't deny a reason or purpose for our existence, except to claim that it
was coincidental or an accident of nature.

Gav, in exasperation, asks the perennial question:
> Ham have you read pirsig's books?

Yes.  But, as a free agent, I am not bound by external authority.  I follow
my own intuitive reasoning.

Thanks for giving me another opportunity to clarify my statements.

Cheers,
Ham