[MD] {MD] Intention changes physical world

[Case]

[Ham]
Once again, I'm in absolute agreement that Awareness does not exist in the
absence of beingness.  It's a mutually exclusive contingency of beingness,
just as Beingness is a mutually exclusive contingency of awareness.
Existence = Being-Aware.  Thus, a rock is nothing if it is not made aware,
and awareness is nothing if it has no object.  One is contingent upon the
other.  That's the dichotomy we can't escape in finitude.

[Case]
The states of being and awareness are simply not mutually exclusive. A thing
can have being and no awareness. Awareness is contingent on being. But being
is not contingent on awareness.

[Ham]
Where we disagree is the proposition that awareness is a "property of
being."  There is no property of subjectivity in a rock, a tree, or a
biological organism.  The fact that you think with your brain and feel with
your sense organs is not what makes you subjectively aware.  Doesn't the
cerebro-nervous system continue to function whether you are conscious or
unconscious?  Yet, you are not aware when you are anesthetized into
unconsciousness.  Why?  Because the "objective content" of your conscious
(subjective) awareness is removed as a result of the anesthesia.  Because,
without an object, awareness is reduced to nothing.  Proprietary awareness
is not a "level", "pattern", or property of beingness.   It is the
contingency of being-aware.

[Case]
As you suggest above awareness can be "mechanically" manipulated chemically,
kinetically, electrically for that matter. It is a property of certain
states of complex being. Nothing you have said above suggests otherwise.

[Ham]
I don't know what your "particular relationship" to Quality is, but I don't
see that it's distinguishable from subjective Value.  Anything subjective is
relative and conditional, hence is existential rather than primary.  Finite
existents like you and I can only hypothesize the primary source.

[Case]
This finite existent does not see why we need to make such a hypothesis. My
subjective states arise from my particular configuration of matter and
energy.

[Ham]
Being and awareness are the actualized contingencies of Essence which is
neither of these.  The dichotomy arises from the negation of nothingness -- 
the antithesis of Essence.  I won't risk giving you another headache by
elaborating on nothingness, except to say that it is the ground of
existential reality.  The entity (identity) that I call Essence is absolute
and whole in its 'is-ness' (i.e., it is free of nothingness).

[Case]
Essence seems to be little more than idealized states of being. Essence is
pattern recognition not a creative process.

[Ham]
Well, back off a bit more and look at it this way: It's no more "complex"
than the intellect is capable of constructing.  All knowledge is subjective.
For someone who is incapable of understanding biological processes, it's
much simpler.

[Case]
Brains, nervous systems even phototropism require pretty complex states of
matter. 

[Ham]
Hegel and Kant weren't scientists.  Their reality paradigm was metaphysical.

[Case]
I suspect Kant was trying to settle arguments and accommodate philosophy to
Newton. Philosophers in the 1700s had their work cut out for them. Newton
had radically reshaped peoples understanding of the world around them.
Philosophical systems were dropping like flies. But then Newton was, after
all, a philosopher.

[Ham]
I know where you're coming from, Case.  I've been there myself.  In my first
five decades on this planet, I successively adopted, then shed, the
doctrines of religion, science, pantheism, mysticism, and existentialism as
an answer to my quest.  It took two more decades to develop my own
philosophy, drawing upon luminaries like Plotinus, Cusa, and Eckhart.  One
thing I learned in the process was not to 'throw the babe out with the
bathwater,' not to reject out of hand the "spiritual" component of existence
simply because it's fashionable or sophisticated in this scientific age to
abjure religion.

An ontogony founded on Essence transcends objectivism in the
cause-and-effect sense, as well as belief in a Supreme Being who rewards and
punishes human beings for their behavior.  I can now understand beauty and
order in the universe as evidence of the spiritual component I was looking
for.  I can sense my connection to Essence in these values, even while
realizing that my "individuality" as a finite creature is conditional and
illusionary.  The Pirsigians think they've achieved higher insight by
imagining (theorizing?) Quality as a pan-esthetic principle.  But it strains
both logic and imagination to posit a heirarchical principle as the source
of  differentiated reality.

[Case]
We all try on ideas, like thrift store clothes as we travel the path of
life. I am glad you have found something that works for you. I do not
begrudge that of anyone. But if one expects to show others "The Way" it must
connect with ordinary experience and have relationships involved that can be
"reified" (to use the word of the week). I think the essential point you are
missing is that extraordinary complexity can arise from very simply
relationships. 

[Ham]
Yes, that's the problem with trying to articulate metaphyics concepts as if
they were physical.  I've been making an effort to simplify my thesis, but
it's not the whole solution.  If I'd written it as a dumbed-down essay on
Morality or Freedom, it would have been criticized as mere platitudes or
pablum for the masses.  However, I'm still working on it, and such
complaints as yours help me recognize the troublesome areas.

[Case]
On the one hand I can see that a metaphysic does no have to depend on
physics but it should at least end in physics. If it is an attempt to
explain what can't be explained it should lead to what can.