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

[Ham Priday]

Mark -- 

I can't believe you're still here!

> I'm happy to encourage free thinking.
> If the MoQ impedes your free thought then you must avoid it.

If you really mean that, I thank you for allowing me that privilege.

> The thing i find most unacceptable about your responses
> is your apparent unfamiliarity with the works of Robert Pirsig.
> I mean, this IS a forum called, 'MOQ.org' so it would be nice
> if you informed yourself before trotting out the quips.

Well, maybe I'm not as nice as you thought.  Let's just say that I've read
enough Pirsig to understand where he's coming from and what he has to do to
get where he wants to go.  I'll cut you a deal: I'll stop criticizing him if
you'll stop quoting him.  Okay?

Ham:
> Evolution is the organizational working out of something
> to a specific end -- i.e., "action by final causation".

Mark:
> Now stop there please. Do you realise an implication of what you
> have just said?  You have just provided a teleology for your
> philosophy which negates freedom.  Sorry mate, but you have.

You're jumping to a false conclusion.  I said that evolution was something
working toward a specifiic end.  I didn't say that man is not free.
Remember, I also said "I do not subscribe to the notion that everything is a
product of evolution" and that "man's awareness is unique in that it is
divided from Being."  (This was part of my précis that you called "a pile of
toss".)  What exists is Being -- Nature or the cosmos.  The cosmic design as
experienced by man is evolutionary; that is, he sees it as a process that
changes from status A to status B over time.  But man's self-awareness is
disconnected from this process; he is a free agent, and his actions are
those of a self-determinate creature.  So human progress reflects the
choices made by individuals and are not determined by biological evolution.

Ham:
> I recognize, as did Plotinus, that all existents, including our
> mode of perceiving them, are derived from a timeless Source.

Mark:
> When you say, 'I recognise' do you mean you agree with the
> conclusion of a chain of deduction?  This is important because
> the MoQ does not deduce a timeless Source, the MoQ says
> it's empirical.

What we call existence is the empirical world of "beingness".  What I call
Essence is not.  Man's essence is not empirical, and man's awareness is a
"null" in Essence.  Therefore, man is removed from the chain of deduction
(i.e, determination).  He is free to "become" what he chooses to be because
he cannot access the future; he cannot know in advance the consequences of
his actions.

Mark:
> When you say, '...human perception is temporal, things are
> intellectually conceived to arise in an orderly fashion...' you
> could very easily be saying, 'Human perception preferences
> temporal order as intellectually conceived.'  In other words,
> temporal are Human values.

Values are the individual's affinity for Essence and are not dependent on
temporality or evolution.  You yourself have said that Dynamic Quality is
pre-intellectual, so you should understand that this holds true for Value as
well.  The intellectual constructs of being follow the perception of Value.

> Ironically, you argue time is empirical, 'the mode of human
> perception is temporal, things are intellectually conceived to
> arise in an orderly fashion over the span of time' while the
> primary source is deduced. The MoQ reverses this and says
> Quality is the empirical primary source while organised time is
> deduced from intellectual values.

Since space/time is mode of human experience, our empirical (intellectual)
construct of the universe is framed in these dimensions.

> Trouble is, your temporal change is, 'an organizational working
> out of something to a specific end' so it looks severely deterministic.
> All your choices are part of the unfolding and cannot have been
> otherwise Ham -  intellectually conceived that is.  But your Source
> is intellectually conceived also isn't it? So, it looks like you're
> contradicting yourself, because you have conceived the non-temporal
 > intellectually.  Oh dear. It's looking a bit shaky isn't it?

Not at all.  Human choices "add" to the "unfolding" but do not affect what
you're calling evolutionary process.  In retrospect -- after the fact -- 
everything that happens can theoretically be linked to pre-determined
causes.  But man doesn't possess this knowledge at the time he decides to
act; he is therefore not pre-determined but is always free to choose.

[SNIP]

Mark:
> So, Intellect always was and continues to be and did not
> evolve.  I suspect you regard intellect as a cause then?
> The Cosmos is, in some regard or other, caused by intellect.

You are confusing Intellect ("body of knowledge") with the intellectual
capacity of the individual and brain functions.  As the neurological
instrument of intellection, the brain is conceived to be part of the
evolutionary process.  But "cognizance" -- the "content" of intellectual
awareness is psychic and non-biological.

Mark:
> Fair enough.  Humanity partakes of intellect which is a
> cause of the Cosmos so Humanity is special in this regard.
> Humanity has something of the divine about it which the
> rest of the biosphere is excluded from.

You could put it that way.  I would eliminate the collectivist term
"humanity" which is misleading in this context.  Man partakes of existential
reality by his proprietary (individual) awareness of its value, which is his
essential complement.  In that sense the human being is afforded a "taste"
of Essence (or the "divine").

I asked:
> Why is my concept of Essence any less valid [than  DQ]
> as a realm that we do not have [direct] access  to?

[SNIP]

Mark:
> I'm not arguing, i'm appealing to experience.
> Quality is immediate experience while essence is deduced.

A THEORY of quality is deduced, Not Quality itself.
A THEORY of essence is deduced, not Essence itself.
There is a difference, you know.  Let's not confuse the issue.

[I'll skip the dialogue on whether the mathematician's sense of Quality
"signifies" that a theorem works, because I think it's begging the question
and a 'tad' juvenile.]

Mark:
> DQ is the conceptually unknown so it can't be rational
> or a construct can it?
> I gather you have read SODV?

I don't understand the point of this question, or why you continue to assail
me with it.  One can develop a rational theory or "construct", whether or
not it can be empirically validated.  Actually, Einstein's Theory of
Relativity and Darwin's Evolution of the Species are such constructs; both
are still being verified against empirical data.  My theory of Essence is no
less theoretical than Pirsig's theory of DQ.  (His claim that DQ is directly
experiencable is a separate issue that does not refute the fact that the
theory was developed through a reasoning process.)
Yes, I've read SODV.  How much science have you studied?

[SNIP]

Mark:
> Aristotle read Protagoras and Protagoras stressed the
> nature of the Good.
> Plato wrote some of his most arduous Socratic dialogue
> coping with Protagoras.
> I certainly acknowledge my statement sounds abysmally
> self-aggrandising to those who are not aware of the
> sophists and their emphasis on the Good.
> (And not how the sophists are usually painted - as the
> pushers of little more than one-upmanship and epicureanism.)
> ZMM may be seen as a continuation of the sophist movement
> beyond the social level and into the intellectual level - modern
> sophists recognise the formal role of the Good in rational thought.

I doubt that the sophists thought in terms of levels and heirarchies.
Anyway, no matter how important the Good may be, we can't define it
intellectually.  Man tends to anthropmorphize goodness, as he does God.
That's why I don't preach a "benevolent" Creator; what's "good" for me may
not be "good" from the absolute perspective of Essence.

[SNIP]

Mark:
> "All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward
> Dynamic Quality."
> ...In traditional, substance-centered metaphysics, life isn't
> evolving toward anything.  Life's just an extension of the
> properties of atoms, nothing more.  It has to be that because
> atoms and varying forms of energy are all there is.
> But in the Metaphysics of Quality, what is evolving isn't
> patterns of atoms.  What's evolving is static patterns of value,
> and while that doesn't change the data of evolution it
> completely up-ends the interpretation that can be given to
> evolution.  (Lila. ch. 11.)  The source of sq patterns isn't
> explicitly stated in Lila so i can't answer that one with a quote.
> As you know, i've been trying to fill in the blanks on that one,
> if indeed there is a blank.
> Perhaps the answer is DQ?

I'm quite sure that, if pressed sufficiently, Pirsig would answer that SQ is
the source.  But a "fall-back position" really dismisses the significance of
the Primary Source.  Without a source behind SQ, patterns are meaningless
because there is no defined purpose and no ultimate end to evolution.  You
say substance-centered metaphysics doesn't define what life evolves toward.
I agree.  But you don't say what the MoQ evolves toward.  If it's
"betterness", what does that mean?

I must stop now because it's getting later and this is running too long in
normal type and may not get posted.  Anyway, there's more than enough to
chew on in this epistle.  I'll try to get to the rest of your comments in a
later message.  (But, if it's all right with you, I'm going to let the
"vapor trails" dissipate.)

Still hanging in here (maybe you can tell me why?),
Ham