[MD] confused

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt [SA mentioned]--

> Your effort to come to agreement on terms is necessary
> for any serious discussion.  I've tried in the past but have
> yet to succeed.  Seems people fall in love with their own
> word meanings and find it hard to give them up. At least
> most agree on what "naked" means. :-)

Yes, I see you and Arlo are engaged in a vicarious morality debate on female
nudity.  Do you suppose he could arrange with Horse to post some photo
samples?  (It would liven things up a bit here.)

Terminology is a sticky wicket, as a wordsmith of your caliber certainly
knows.  I suspect that more than one philosopher has doomed his thesis to
oblivion by the words he chose to explain it.  Practically speaking, we all
adopt a vernacular that best conveys the concepts we're trying to express.
I'll admit that I've selected terms whose common or root meanings come
closest to expressing the concepts of Essentialism.  I don't insist, or even
encourage, others to use my terms and definitions in communicating a
different philosophical perspective.  However, I do think it behooves any
theorist dealing with abstractions to carefully define those terms for which
some "special meaning" is assumed or intended.

> I see your "sensibility" and Pirsig's "experience" as synonyms.

I don't, because "experience" presupposes an object, while sensibility does
not.  Thus, feeling pain or pleasure, seeing red, and being aware of
ourselves can be regarded as types of sensibility in the absence of objects,
but without a referent object or event, there can be no experience.
Experience is always the conscious awareness of 'something' apart from the
self.  (Although one can be aware of himself in the absence of experience,
he's not likely to expressed it as: "I am experiencing my self.")  All
organisms have sensibility, whether they integrate it into consciousness or
not.  Human beings "know" that they are aware, which is why I refer to human
consciousness as proprietary awareness.

> I see "awareness" the same as "sensibility" and "experience."
> I don't know what the brain stem has to do with anything.

The brain "intellectualizes" sensory data into specific objects of
experience localized in time and space relative to the subject.  That of
course makes Experience somewhat ambiguous, too.  Is it correctly described
as subjective or objective?   In the sense that WE are the perceivers,
experience is subjective.  But in the sense that its contents are WHAT we
perceive, experience is objective.  Inasmuch as Pirsig doesn't acknowledge
subjects and objects, he probably thought it doesn't matter -- he can refer
to experience as a "quality pattern".  Metaphysically, though, (I THINK) we
would both say that the objects of experience are intellectualized
constructs, which -- at least in my philosophy -- means that objects are the
subject's representational (i.e., differentiated) images of the value(s)
perceived.

> What about "consciousness?"

I see consciousness as synonomous with cognizance ("knowing").  I don't
think we can be fully conscious without experience, as defined above, but I
think it underlies or subtends the continuity of sensible awareness.  I
would choose the second of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary's five
definitions: "2. the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion,
volition, and thought."

Incidentally, Webster's follows this definition with the word MIND (in caps.
as a synonym).  So there's the answer to SA's query: What is MIND?"  It's
Consciousness.

Essentially yours,
Ham