[MD] Ham thinks the MOQ is a form of phenomenalism

[Ham Priday]

Hello Mark --


You begin by saying:
> Excuse me please, but i rather feel i do understand your
> essentialism.  My main critisicm is that, prior to Human
> experience you postulate a realm we do not have access to.
> The realm in question is described in your thesis in some
> detail using the language of Aristotle and related thinkers.
> In short, this realm is conceptual; it is contructed from
> rational axioms.  But, many of these axioms have an
> evolutionary history within the Western philosophical
> tradition and are derived from Aristotle's systematisation
> of logical causes and categories whether you like it,
> recognise it, agree with it or not.

In response to my invitation to continue the dialogue "if you think we're
making progress", you conclude by saying:
> It's abundantly clear that progress is not being made Ham.
> Further, progress is being deliberately blocked.

Since you are now busily expostulating (or should I say "crystallizing?) a
reality based on Chaos, perhaps this is not the best time for me to be
defending a cosmology in which order and balance are the primary
characteristics.

Obviously there are epistemological differences in the way we think, but
these differences were identified several posts ago.  Now, for some unknown
reason, I'm being criticized for failing to follow Phaedrus' analysis of
"evolutionary history within the Western philosophical tradition."  Your
criticism is unwarranted, since Essentialism is not based on the philosophy
of Plato or Aristotle, nor do I claim that it represents any established
philosophical tradition.  In fact, I offer it as a departure from the
traditional
perspective.  The fact that I use "rational axioms" and " the language of
Aristotle" to explain it -- who doesn't? -- should not bind me to the
conclusions reached by the Greek idealists or any other traditional school
of philosophy.

I'd like to dispense with this comparison by citing what I think is the
major distinction between essence as defined by Plato and Aristotle, and the
Essence of Essentialism.  Insofar as Plato's theory of knowledge
(epistemology) can be understood from the Socratic dialogues, he considered
his ideas to be objective "essences", independent of human minds, that serve
as the model for the experienced world.  While he called the idea of the
Good "the most noble of the Forms", along with Beauty, Symmetry and Truth,
he did not posit Goodness as the primary source of the world but, rather, as
a type or class of being.  Plato held firmly to "the One" as the ultimate
source, despite his inability to derive "the Many" from it.

Aristotle further divided Plato's generalized Forms into specific
"essences", asserting that every object in the sense world is a union of two
ultimate principles: material and formal.  Aristotle also repudiated Plato's
doctrine that real being is the form (i.e., "universal"), insisting that the
object sensed is the form "in transition" to becoming "actualized" being.
>From that concept came the "evolutionary" cosmology that everything is in a
state of flux moving toward its substantive potential.  W.H. Walsh,
referring to the 'Categories', characterized Plato's metaphysics this way:
"Substance is that to which things happen; a term expressing primary
substance is one which can have predicates but cannot itself be predicated
of anything further."  Thus, Aristotle transformed the idealized Platonic
"essence" into "the process of becoming", an ontology that in the last
century became the basis of Heidegger's 'Dasein' and the existentialists'
'being-in itself'.

I needn't remind you that my thesis makes none of these assumptions.  I
equate Essence with the One, and all relational experience with the
infinitesimal space/time perspective of proprietary awareness.  And, while
evolution may be of interest to the biologist, just as the record of
societal development is to the historian, such transitional perspectives
have no significant relevance to Essentialism.

<snip>

Mark:
> I'm not going to flog a dead Horse.
> 'This is why Plato finds it necessary to separate, for example,
> "horseness" from "horse" and say that horseness is real and
> fixed and true and unmoving, while the horse is a mere,
> unimportant, transitory phenomenon. Horseness is pure Idea.
> The horse that one sees is a collection of changing Appearances,
> a horse that can flux and move around all it wants to and even
> die on the spot without disturbing horseness, which is the
> Immortal Principle and can go on forever in the path of the
> Gods of old.' (ZMM. ibid)

But you ARE flogging a dead horse.  Nothing from this ZMM quote comes even
close to describing my ontology.

<snip>

Mark:
> In the context of the on-line forum you are contributing to,
> Aristotle's 'chief claim to fame' is a bit more than [categorization].
> 'Rhetoric is an art, Aristotle began, because it can be reduced
> to a rational system of order.
> That just left Phædrus aghast. Stopped. He'd been prepared to
> decode messages of great subtlety, systems of great complexity
> in order to understand the deeper inner meaning of Aristotle,
> claimed by many to be the greatest philosopher of all time.
> And then to get hit, right off, straight in the face, with an
> asshole statement like that! It really shook him.' (ZMM.  ibid)

Do you take all your interpretations of Aristotle from a character in a
novel?  The premise here is that "rhetoric is an art because it can be
reduced to a rational system of order".  For the sake of your illustrious
author, I'll pretend that Aristotle actually said this.  What is a "rational
system of order"?   The phrase is redundant in the first place, since any
ordered system can be considered rational.   Music is a system of Order,
Mark.  So are Mathematics, Science, Logic, and Language.  A System itself is
an "organized arrangement, set or procedure."  Certainly rhetoric is an
ordered system.  Does Phædrus mean to suggest that Plato's most famous
protege -- the founder of metaphysics -- denounced it as rhetorical
nonsense?  Somebody is spouting nonsense here, and it ain't Aristotle!

You provide another long ZMM quote toward the same end which I'll skip
because it insults my intelligence.  The idea that it is useless to study or
learn anything because it involves "names and relationships" would leave us
all morons. Pirsig certainly doesn't believe that, and neither do you.  And
why on earth are you throwing Aristotle at me?  I've told you before, I'm
not an Aristotelian.

< S N I P >

Mark:
> Plotinus synthesised Aristotle and Plato.
> Plotinus owes an enormous debt to both Plato and Aristotle.
> But this is not the point. The point is, as with Plato,
> Plotinus places 'The Good' at the apex of his philosophy.
> For, 'The Good' read, Quality.
> Are you begining to get the picture yet Ham?

Yea.  It's an art form called rhetoric.  We can call anything by any name
and make a profound impression on somebody.

You disappoint me, Mark.

Mark:
> Plotinus places, 'The Good' at the apex of his philosophy.
> For, 'The Good' read, Quality.
> Or are you going wriggle out of this by pointing out that
> Plotinus is Egyptian?

"The One cannot aim at any good or desire anything; it is superior to the
Good; it is the Good, not for itself, but for other things to the extent to
which they can share in it.  The One is not an intellective existence.   If
it were, it would constitute a duality.  It is motionless because it is
prior to motion quite as it is prior to thinking.  ...Ignorance presupposes
a dual relationship: one does not know another.  But the One in its
aloneness can neither know nor be ignorant of anything.  Being with itself,
it does not need to know itself.  Still, we should not even attribute to it
this presence with itself if we are to preserve its unity.  Excluded from it
are both thinking of itself and thinking of others.  It is not like that
which thinks but, rather, like the activity of thinking.  The activity of
thinking does not itself think; it is the cause that has some other being
think and cause cannot be identicial with effect.  This cause, therefore, of
all existing things cannot be any one of them.  BECAUSE IT IS THE CAUSE OF
GOOD IT CANNOT, THEN, BE CALLED THE GOOD; yet in another sense it is the
Good above all."
                                                    -- [Elmer O'Brien: "The
Essential Plotinus"]

Good luck in crystallizing chaos.

-- Ham