[MD] Intuitive Reasoning?

[Heather Perella]

Case, Ham, Mark,


     [Case to Ham] 
> The problem with intuition is that it is an
> essentially private event. For
> example you have this intuition about essence and a
> passionate belief in the
> Primary Source. But until you can frame these in
> terms that inspire others
> to share your intuition or revelation then your
> passion will remain a
> private event.


     Yes, a private event, unless, as you state one
can inspire others or a revelation on the part of
others occurs in order to understand ones intuition. 
Yet, how to connect and inspire others.  One way is
not to dismiss what others have confronted you with,
Ham.  Unless you are tired and admittedly can not
avoid knowing what Mark has commented upon to be good.
 Still waiting for any kind of response to Mark's post
some time ago.  It looks as if Ham accepts what Mark
has to say, and Ham can not avoid the contradictions
and poor explanatory value his thesis has.  This is a
challenge to you Ham.  It does not have to mean
defeat.  It just may mean that your thesis is
incompatible to some on this earth.  Many on this
earth say their way of life, their G-d, their
philosophy, etc... is universal, is the real way, is
the way it is metaphysically.  Yet, we all know that
diversity is a hallmark of life on this earth when it
comes to human beings.  What is universal for one is
not universal to others, which makes universal an odd
way of stating ones Way, especially after you know
what's over the next hill in somebody else's life.

     Here is the post that Mark responded to Ham that
I was really looking forward to hearing Ham further
comment upon.  This dialogue was very forth-coming in
the insight that was provided.  


Thanks,
SA

      Here is the dialogue and post between Mark and
Ham from Monday September 18, 2006 as follows:



   [Ham]
I see that you have chained yourself to the
determinism of Pirsig's  
foes,
the logical positivists.  This perverted reasoning
binds you to  the 
precept
that there is no free will.
 
Mark: Hello Ham.
Not at all. I don't know where you got that idea from?
Clutching at 
straws  
methinks.
The MoQ emphasises freedom and has an elegant
explanation for its  
necessity.
Godnature.
Your thesis desperately wants to explain freedom but
fails to do so; my  
assessment is based on your own statements:
You stress the importance of 'man' partaking of the
divine and 
therefore  
free to choose to 'add' to a deterministic unfolding.
So, via man, essence contributes twofold to its
unfolding:
1. By unfolding.
2. By allowing man to 'add' to the unfolding.
But how can 'man' 'add' to a determined teleology?
Man in your thesis is not man, he is Godman removed
from nature.
 
Ham: Yet, ironically, you accuse me of being
"committed to determinism  -- tied to causation as a
technical term".  
That's
just not true.   You have misinterpreted me, Mark.
 
Mark: I don't think so. I think it's more a case of
Ham wanting his 
cake  and 
wanting to eat it at the same time.
Man is man, but Godman also.

Ham: I've acknowledged only that, from the human
(temporal)  
perspective, 
events
are thought to be the result of causal forces or 
conditions, and that,
theoretically, if all of the forces could be 
determined, it would be
possible to predict all events.  There are two  major
fallacies in this
argument.

1. Our inability to access the  future prevents us
from knowing 
beforehand
what the outcome of the given  conditions will be. 
(At best we can 
analyze
only a few very limited  events in hindsight.)
 
Mark: The (theoretical) predetermined unfolding of
essence as final  
cause 
'knows' what the future holds doesn't it Ham?
Answer: Yes Mark, indeed it does.
So, man may think he is free, but he isn't from the
point of view of  
Godman.
Now you are back to the, 'how can 'man' 'add' to a
determined 
teleology'  
question, to which the answer it:
Man thinks he has free will but it's all predetermined
final cause  of 
essence unfolding anyway even if he thinks he's adding
to it, which  
doesn't matter 
because he's Godman removed from nature.

2. A "chain of  deduction" presupposes events
occurring over time.
 
Mark: It presupposes change not time. Time is an
artificial imposition 
upon  
our experience of change.
So, now you're telling me the very rationality of man
is not part of 
his  
divine nature?
And yet, your whole thesis begins and ends with
rational thought.
 
Ham: You said:
"we do not experience space-time, we postulate it."
I'll  accept the 
view
that the serial flow of events is the experiential
mode of  human 
awareness.
 
Mark: You are swinging back and forth between
experience of change, and 
the  
artificial construct of ordered time.
We don't experience time, we experience change.
It's a short step now to adding that we value change -
change is of  
values.
Therefore human awareness is of value.
Time is an intellectual construct of uniform division.

Ham: But this finite limitation of awareness does not
affect  reality.
 
Mark: The reality of Godman? Godman's divine soul?
 
Ham: In fact,
if we're talking about Absolute Reality, there is no
"flow  of events"
because Essence is immutable and timeless.
 
Mark: The Hume approach:
The timelessness of essence is an extrapolation from
everyday examples, 
as  
Hume observed in his Treatise concerning Human
understanding. It's not 
real,  
it's a story, a fiction, a narrative. As such, it is
real in the sense 
that all 
 stories from Father Christmas to Legend of sleepy
hollow are real, but 
it's 
a  Human invention. Actually, i think it's all a bit,
'My Dad's bigger 
than 
your  Dad' in nature. Maybe a bit, 'My Willy's bigger
than your Willy' 
in nature 
what  with all this, 'Godman' stuff flying about?
Your thesis is an analogue of Quality which everyone
experiences.
Stories of, 'That which is greatest' begin with
everyday observations 
of  
values, which are then extended and exaggerated to
infinite 
proportions.
This is the social aspect of your thesis which aims to
garner celebrity  
status for its author.
On the intellectual level it has logical consistency -
but no wonder? 
You  
invented the rules based on rules you have observed in
other 
narratives.
If you say essence is the best thing since sliced
bread then who can 
deny  
you?
After all, by definition, your essence is what you say
it is.
But no one experiences it, except as a game of
intellectual chess.
I could tell you i have a secret box under my bed
which has all the  
properties of your essence couldn't i?
 
Even rational thought isn't real now according to your
latest  
statements.


Mark:
> I don't agree with your stance and i don't think you
 give
> a good account of why Humans are privileged in this
regard.
>  As far as the MoQ is concerned ALL patterns are
involved
> in an  evolutionary process from atoms to ideas.
> Being is as close as you want  to be to it.

Ham: It's not a question of how "close to being" man 
is.  It's the 
metaphysical
principle that man (i.e., proprietary  awareness) is
not an existent, 
that
awareness and beingness are mutually  exclusive in the
dichotomy of
existence.  This frees man from the causal  "chain of
deduction" 
whereby
natural events are predetermined.
 
Mark: Well, well, well, well, well, well, well how
very nice.
It seems, 'man' has got a portion of himself well and
truly stuck into  
essence while the rest of him is left dangling.
The MoQ dispenses with all this Father Christmas crap
and appeals to  
experience.
Being is value, every last bit of it. It is all value.
If it isn't valued, it doesn't exist.
'Man' as you like to have it, isn't in any sense not
an existent, in 
fact  
everything about 'man' as you like to have it, is as
real as the day is 
long.  
Even his bloody awful nightmares, prejudices and fears
and rational 
constructs  
qua rational constructs.
Natural events are made of the same stuff (values) as
man; he is 
therefore  
IN the world and not an outside observer enjoying a
jolly at everything  
else's 
expense.
So, natural events are not predetermined, and neither
is 'man' as you 
like  
to have it, because values are responding to DQ, which
is always new, 
and 
always  changing.
Your thesis turns man into Godman removed from nature.

Mark:
> 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.

Ham:
> I would eliminate the collectivist term  "humanity"
> which is misleading in this context.

Mark:
> Men  and Women are Humans. Humanity is a collective
> of both men and  women.

Ham: But awareness of Self and Other is not Humanity. 
 Experience is 
not
Humanity.  Cognizant intelligence is not  Humanity. 
You Pirsigians 
dearly
want to be "humanists", and, as a  consequence, you
eradicate the very 
soul
of Man -- his proprietary  Self.
 
Mark: Ah yes. That bit which is divine.
The soul now is it?
It's taken along time bit i'm slowly dragging it out
of you.
OK. So man has a divine soul which has access to
Essence which you  
term, 
'proprietary self' for some daft reason known only to
yourself.
Essence is the, 'other world' of the timeless
absolute.
(Probably sounds better than, 'divine soul' i suppose?
A bit more  
scientific 
and considered even though science is the product of
rational  thought, 
which 
is not part of the divine as we have just learned.)
I imagine Women have a divine soul also, but
linguistic convention gets 
in  
the way of explicitly saying so, so sod any
consideration of them.
Most Humans may, rather regrettably, entertain notions
that other 
people  are 
things which really matter but not according to Ham's
thesis.
Oh no!
Other people are Lockean qualities to the eye but
'divine souls' on the  
inside; divine souls which cannot be attained
rationally because the 
rational  
changes and the divine is changeless.
 
[SNIP]

<snip>

Ham: "Evolution simply IS value evolution" is a
simplistic way of  
saying 
"Value
is everything".  Even if this were true, where would
Value  be -- what 
point
would it serve -- if there were no awareness of it?  
Clearly, there is 
no
Value without sensibility or awareness; therefore,
Value  cannot be
everything.
 
Mark: Value is everything. Awareness is included in
the category of  
everything, so awareness is value, numpty.

Mark:
> Quality is  immediate experience from which patterns
> such as deductions  emerge.
> A theory of Quality, called the MoQ, which is an
>  intellectual pattern of value, allows you to look
for
> yourself and  observe there to be Inorganic,
> Biological, Social and Intellectual  realms of
values.
> It is verifiable.

Ham: I'm surprised that you  would categorize a
philosophy as a pattern 
of 
value.
I ssume that  Essentialism, then, is another pattern
of value.
 
Mark: Yes, it is. It's an intellectual pattern of
value, and as  
intellectual 
patterns of value are the most moral, i support your
endeavour,  even 
if at 
times you come across as an arrogant, 'I know it all,
and you poor  
'Pirsigians', (private titter) are a sad lot of
no-hopers.'
Being a Godman certainly gives you an advantage i see.
 
Since there
can be an infinite number of such patterns, how are we
to  know which 
is the
"better" one?  Or, is this something that the 
evolution of Value 
itself can
tell us?
 
Mark: Aesthetic. I've said this already:
Mathematicians choose the best  
thesis on aesthetic grounds.

Mark:
> In what sense is Essence  experienced?  How can
people
> verify essence except purely as a  chain of
deductive inference
> with no basis in empirical reality other  than
intellectual reality?
> Quality is experienced while essence is  deduced.

Ham: Honestly, I recognize no significant difference
in the  human 
sensibility to
what you call Quality and what I call Value. That is, 
pain, joy,
magnificance, freedom, justice, truth, mediocrity,
excellence,  
brightness,
darkness, etc., are all values to me. We agree that
values and  
qualities
are directly experienced.  The only difference is that
I see  them as
relative, and you describe them as "high" or "low"
quality  patterns.  
But
Essence is not Value, and no finite creature has
direct  experience of 
what
is absolute.  You might say that I have "deduced" 
Essence, in the same 
way
that you've deduced Quality or that the theologians 
deduced God.
Inasmuch as we don't have access to absolute
knowledge, we must  arrive 
at
such conceptions deductively.  That ensures our
freedom of  choice -- 
the
autonomy of man.
 
Mark: Quality is experienced not deduced Ham. When is
this going to 
sink  in?

Mark:
> Theory is chosen on aesthetic grounds which is to 
say
> upon their value.

Ham: Try telling that to the theorist of  science or
mathematics.  If 
he could
choose his theories purely on  esthetic grounds, he
could dispense with 
all
that bothersome investigation,  analysis, testing, and
proof.  (Was 
that
Einstein rolling over in his  grave?)
 
Mark: 'The particle physicist John Polkinghorne
observes (1996, p.103) 
that  
harmony
enters the picture the moment scientists talk among
themselves: 
‘“It  must 
be right� is
the way [scientists] feel about an elegant and
insightful  idea, often 
long 
before the
empirical adequacy of the theory has been  verified to
a degree 
sufficient to 
warrant
such a conclusion.’ Polkinghorne  cites the example
of the 
mathematician, 
Paul Dirac
(who was awarded the Nobel  prize in 1933 for his work
in quantum 
mechanics) 
and
Einstein who  believed that his theory of special
relativity was 
‘just too  
good to be
wrong’ before subsequent experiments confirmed  his
confidence.
This search for beautiful equations is more than a
mere  mathematical
aestheticism. The reason that we believe that we find
the best  
explanation of
physical phenomena in this way derives from our
experience  that such 
theories
have time and again proved to have a fruitfulness 
extending far beyond 
the
original phenomena for which they were invented. In 
science, the 
beautiful is
the good because it has proved to be the fertile. 
Dirac’s lifetime 
search for
beautiful equations is an object lesson that this  is
so, as is 
Einstein’s 
discovery of
general relativity through a similar  eight-year
quest. (Polkinghorne, 
1996, 
p.105)'
(McWatt. 2004. p. 45 my emphasis)
 
'However, whatever the term employed for fundamental
reality,
there does  appear to be some agreement (as observed
in Section 2.1.) 
between
Buddhism  and physicists in that it is essentially
harmonic in nature. 
An  
important
part of this understanding is Nagarjuna’s notion of
sunyata  
(non-dual 
understanding)
which he regards as relating to a fundamental 
harmony. Evidence that 
this 
just isn’t
a romantic whim is provided by Pirsig  in reference to
the 
mathematician 
Poincaré
and his colleague in the field of  physics, Albert
Einstein who both 
emphasised the
harmonic nature of the  universe. (ibid)


[SNIP]

Mark:
> The claim is that ALL  reasoning processes are
emerging
> from DQ as an aesthetic.
> DQ is  the source of rationality itself.
> Essence is nothing without rational  thought -
Essence begins
> and ends with rational thought, but not  experienced
except
> as rational thought.
> All your guff about  'man' tasting the divine is a
pointer toward
> the Quality you experience  being codified as a
pattern of
> rational intellectual thought, in the  same way
religion is a
> Social patterning of the Quality devout religious 
people
> experience in their lives being codified in their 
religion.
> In other words, you worship in the church of 
reason.

Ham: Thus shall it ever be, if man is free to choose. 
 Science will 
never 
provide
empirical proof for the proposition that there is  a
Creator or that 
there is
not a Creator.  Only intuitive reasoning can  arrive
at such 
conclusions.
The "law of free choice" is part of the cosmic 
design.  Individual 
Freedom
is a value that you apparently don't fully 
appreciate.
 
Mark: I not only appreciate freedom but i have a
superior metaphysical  
explanation for it as morality itself.
I don't need to consider myself a Godman in order to
make myself feel  
important and superior.

Ham: While, you'll undoubtedly have more remarks  on
my last 
installment, I 
see
this debate as a No Winner.  Our mindsets  are at odds
on the 
fundamentals,
and there is little either of us can say  that will
change our 
thinking.  I'm
pleased that you are following my  thesis, which shows
intellectual
curiosity, if nothing else.  But I feel  that we have
reached an 
impasse and
should probably go on to other  things.  Do you still
want to agree  to
disagree?

Cheers,
Ham
 
Mark: If you carry on the in the manner i have become
accustomed to i 
think  
you're going to drop yourself right in it.
The latest revelation is that, 'man' has a divine
soul.
Problem is, you dishonestly derive man's divine soul
from your thesis 
when  
your thesis has been shaped to have divine soul as a
conclusion:
Godman, removed from filthy nature and made of higher
stuff.
Bully Beef for you Ham.
Love,
Mark
 
P.S.
 
Welcome to Sun State
The language of  light
The energies impulse
The loud, dark, iron
The purpose of  history
In Eurasian Steppes
>From threshold to  threshold
Astonishment

You’ve misunderstood the place where you  stand
God Man

You’ve misunderstood the place where you stand
God  Man

>From different maps
Dead bees on a cake
You’re sweeping the  forest
Man, it’s getting late
The milkweed is growing
Through cotton  grass
You borrowed the car
But you didn’t ask

You’ve misunderstood  the place where you stand
God Man

You’ve misunderstood the place where  you stand
God Man

You’ve misunderstood the place where you  stand
God Man

And everything’s dark
Then you’re wrapped up
Born  into brightness

You’ve misunderstood the place where you stand
You’ve  misunderstood the place where you stand
You’ve misunderstood the place where  you stand

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