[MD] David M and DMB clearly disagree -what do others think?

[Ham Priday]

[Quoting David M]:

> Surely the possible and the potential or Plato's potentia
> are hard to distinguish but feel free to try. There is some
> death here though, because when the possible becomes
> actual only one possible is actualised whilst all others are
> withdrawn, but the process moves on to a new situation
> (past/history) and a new set of possible futures from
> which only one is selected (as long as you reject the many
> worlds option of quantum theory which is I think is logical
> but absurd).

Your epistemology, and possibly Pirsig's, seems to be constructed on the
idea that an event cannot become actualized unless it is "possible-ized".
That is, actual events are somehow selected from a check list of "possible"
events and, while we experience both kinds, only the actual events become
history.  Does this approximately describe your theory?

I can not accept the "reality" of such a check list, since possibility is
neither actualized nor derived from the potentiality of Essence (DQ).  Dmb
has said "there is no reality outside of experience ...and 'the possible' is
not real."  I concur with his analysis.  Possibilities are nothing more than
conceptualized thoughts about "what might happen".  We conjure up such
thoughts based on the knowledge that, although something always happens, we
cannot know how or which ones will.  It's the individual's way of trying to
fill in the missing information by anticipating what we don't know, by
considering yet unknown and unreal events as "possibilities".

I submit that a "template" for actualized reality doesn't require
possibility any more than it requires multiple universes.  My theory is that
existence is "fixed' or complete rather than a sequence of events.  The
reason we experience the universe as an evolutionary process is that our
"now" -- the moment of experience -- is an infinitesimal point in infinite
reality.  Space/time is the mode of human experience, but ultimate reality
is not limited to this pinpoint perspective, nor is it differentiated into
discreet objects coming into being as a series of events.

To put it simply, we are all looking at the same reality with the same
handicap:  we are deprived of its Essence.  What we are aware of is a
relational "otherness" that we want for ourselves.  This is our sense of
Value.  Bo once defined it as "the value of the S/O divide."  What makes us
different as individuals is that we each sense that Value differently,
relative to ourselves.  But since it represents the Value of Essence, the
universe that we mentally construct from it is essentially the same for each
of us.  Thus, the mathematical and geometrical relations that govern the
forms of experienced phenomena, provide an "actualized template" which is
universal to its cognizant agents.  This allows us to recognize objects as
having identical properties and fashion them to our mutual needs, affording
us the universal correspondence of individual experience that makes
civilization possible.

There is no "possibility" here; it is all "actuality".  Even the freedom we
have as autonomous beings to choose our values is relative to the absolute
source.

[DM]:
> Your view is anti-freedom and deterministic, I reject it as not
> in accord with experience.

Causality, like probability and possibility, is a human construct stemming
from our temporal perspective.  Existence is a 'fait accompli', and the
divisions and differentiations that we call experience are due to the
limited perspective of man's organic sensibility.  Thus we intellectualize
the objective universe as "deterministic", but our subjective value choices
are made freely and unbiased by the source.

[DM]:
> Do you not experience what you imagine?
> Then how do you know you have imagined it?

To avoid confusion over terminology, I use "awareness" for sensual,
conceptual, valuistic, or imagined phenomena, and reserve "experience" for
the cognizance of actual events or objects (of experience).  If you will
indulge me in that practice, I think it will spare us a great deal of
misunderstanding.

[DM]:
> What is inner and outer is both a form of experience/awareness.
> But there is no outer without ideas. Inner and outer are ideas.
> Patterns exist as inner and outer to create levels that can be
> divided into at least 4.

I don't recognize this "inner-outer" formulation from Pirsig's writings.
Where does it come from?  And what's the distinction that you see between
inner and outer?

[Ham, previously]:
> Knowledge of the possible is part of our intelligence
> but not our experience.

 [DM]:
> Experience less intelligence would be rather poor,
> maybe a bit like being a rock.

Awareness, as I use it, includes all proprietary consciousness -- feelings,
desires, values, thoughts, intellection, etc., as well as the experience of
concrete (actualized) existence.

[DM]
> Our awareness of what is possible clearly expands,
> so as we get older there is often less DQ and less surprises.

What is your point here?

[DM]:
> Remove the possible and the actual would never
> change again or anything new emerge.

As I said above, the notion of actuality evolving from possibility is a
human construct.  The cause of creation is not possibility but the absolute
potentiality of the source [Essence -- or, if you insist, DQ].  This
potentiality is not
actualized as possibility but as existence.

[DM]:
> You are at the crossroads, left is possible,
> so is right. Only one direction can become actual for you.

No, I am free to move in either direction.  But the direction I choose is a
value choice, not a possibility.  And it does not affect the universal
template of existence.

<snip>

> DM: Is what you think actual or possible?

I don't think possible; I think actual.  If I had put my money down on last
week's lottery, I wouldn't be thinking of a "possible" $300 million, I'd be
thinking of an actual win.

[DM]:
> You're just an expert witness on SOM, I'm the judge
> and jury mate!  And this is a beauty competition, and
> I get to decide who I take home, if other people prefer
> ugly old SOM (she had her day though) so be it.

Guess I won't be going home with you, then.  But thanks for the compliment;
I've never been called an "expert witness" before, even when I did jury
duty.

Best regards,
Ham