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

[Squonkonguitar at aol.com]

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.
 
Mark: Hello Ham.
Yes, i do feel progress is being blocked.
Take my statement above? You've not tackled it. We can't make progress if  
you ignore my points.

Ham: 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.
 
Mark: I don't know why you have decided to introduce this?
It's not part of this thread, and these speculations are not part of the  MoQ.

Ham: 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."
 
Mark: I have no idea where this came from?
I said, repeat: I said you are following this tradition.
This is not a criticism, it's quite plain.
I'm speaking as a philosophy postgraduate who has seen this for  himself.
I'm not criticising you, i'm simply indicating that you are very much  within 
an established tradition.
That's why i felt your stuff could be taught at Undergraduate level.
 
Ham: 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.
 
Mark: I am NOT criticising you Ham for goodness sake.
 
Ham: 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.
 
Mark: Fair enough, but, and i must bid you try and see this, but ZMM  
explores the Western tradition at a very deep level of understanding.
So deep, i have yet to identify you understanding the magnitude of what is  
being presented to you Ham.
You indicate your blind spot when you say, 'The fact that I use "rational  
axioms" and " the language of Aristotle" to explain it -- who doesn't?' hits the 
 nail on the head.

Ham: 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.
 
Mark: Oh right! Sorry Ham! I've been misunderstanding you.
This explains your inability to deal with evolution - evolution isn't  
happening in your philosophy.
Bloody hell, i think you've just set back Human intellectual advancement  
about 3000 years.

<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)

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

Mark: Horseness isn't evolving and evolution does not appear in your  thesis.

<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)

Ham: 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.
 
Mark: This quote is taken from Aristotle's Poetics.
 
Ham: 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!
 
Mark: Oh dear. Touched a nerve here haven't we?
It is rationality itself ZMM explores.
I told you this many posts ago:
'Now I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be  
tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal  
recognition of Quality in its operation.' (ZMM. ch. 24)
Aristotle suggests art can be rationalised and in doing so the creative  
spark central to art is diminished.
I once asked you who taught Dickens to write or Rembrandt to paint and all  i 
got back was a very poor off hand comment not fit for intelligent  debate.
It is at moments like that when i see most clearly that you're not  concerned 
with having a decent dialogue.


Ham: 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.
 
Mark: You certainly sound like one. If you read his Nicomachean ethics you  
may see for yourself. Potential this, actualised that, essence the other.
Even Aristotle contemplated something like evolution, but to dismiss it all  
together just so your system isn't compromised is pretty ignorant it seems to  
me.
You HAVE to account for evolution because there is too much evidence to  
dismiss it as insignificant Ham. Far too much!

< 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?

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: But science IS an art form Ham! That's the whole point!
We, as creative Human beings are generating our own metaphors and analogues  
of experience and science is included.
This does not diminish science - science is recognised in the MoQ as one of  
the highest moral achievements of evolutionary development. The development 
may  be justified. A whole set of new rhetorical devices have had to be created 
in  order to accomplish it, but they remain our inventions.

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
 
Mark: '...yet in another sense it is the Good above all.' OK.
Talk about disappointment, how about this Ham:
I suggested that your philosophy may be more appropriately called,  
'Proprioceptive proprietary awareness' as this seems to be the central feature  of it? 
But you haven't gone near this and my reasons for why this may be so with  a 
barge pole.
More progress blocked.
You explore essence and negation and finite division and all the rest  of it, 
but your thesis seems arbitrarily biased so as to explain awareness  in 
subjective terms. 'Proprioceptive proprietary awareness' you call  it. From a 
metaphysical point of view, it would be equally viable to  conclude that awareness 
itself is a feature of the finite divided cosmos.
And what are we to make of evolution?
Is evolution a poor mistake?
Love,
Mark