[MD] Heads or tails?

[Hamilton Priday]

Krimel --


[Ham, previously]:
> Have you considered the possibility that what is "after the fact"
> in the finite perspective may be timeless in the absolute sense?

[Krimel]:
> Why yes Ham I for one have thought about it quite a bit.
> It does not hold up for two reasons. The earliest and
> easiest is thermodynamics. It holds that time is not reversible.
> The reason is that the overall rise in disorder over times
> means that energy dissipated as heat can not be returned to
> its previous states of order. A second reason would be
> quantum mechanics which shows that both the future and
> the past are fundamentally unpredictable.
> Since the exact position of every particle in the universe can
> never be specified the future can be deterministic but not
> predictable. This same logic applies to the past as well as
> to the future.

Why is it that if you're NOT Case you ply me with the same circular logic?

If you write a novel about John and Alice who fall in love and get married, 
do you worry about the genetic probabilty that Alice may bear an autistic 
child?  Or that John's future is doomed by a decision he made ten years 
earlier?  No, because since you create the story, you set the rules for what 
transpires.

According to Pirsig's MoQ and Priday's Essentialism, experience creates the 
universe.  If this is true, then the physical laws and principles that we 
observe in the evolution of nature are no more intrinsic to the universe 
than our experience of it.  That goes for quantum mechanics, Newton's 
physics, and the laws of probabilty.  All of these "relational attributes" 
are intellectual constructs that have their basis in the empirical world of 
our creation.

[Krimel?]:
> The fixed model of time that you work with is simply inadequate.
> Before and after are not fixed. They are not fixed in the way we
> understand and work with them every day, they are not fixed by
> the laws of physics, they are not fixed by metaphysics.

I never said before and after were "fixed".  I said that time (and space) 
exist only in the mind of man, specifically in the finite limitations of 
"consciousness, born of our biological selves."  That's a direct quote from 
Dr. Lanza's essay which I'm running on this week's Values Page 
http://www.essentialism.net/balance.htm .  (I suggest that you and your 
"controller" delve into that piece.  You may find it interesting.)

> This ultimate reality you mention; what makes it ultimate?

Something has to be fundamental or "ultimate" to reality, whether it's a 
Supreme Being, Dynamic Quality, absolute Nothingness, or absolute Essence. 
I have posited Essence as the primary source of actualized reality.  It is 
my ontology.  What's yours?

[Krimel, referring to the Lao-Tzu quote]:
> Nice poem, Ham! Where ever did you find it?
> It applies beautifully. Is there more?

I copied it from a small volume titled "The Way of Life according to Lao 
Tzu" translated by Witter Bynner, Perigee Books(1962) [ISBN-10:0399502416], 
available from Amazon.com for $6.45.  Here's the complete poem which has no 
title:

     'Since true foundation cannot fail
     But holds as good as new,
     Many a worshipful son shall hail
     A father who lived true.'
     Realized in one man, fitness has its rise;
     Realized in a family, fitness multiplies;
     Realized in a village, fitness gathers weight;
     Realized in a country, fitness becomes great;
     Realized in a world, fitness fills the skies.
     And thus the fitness of one man
     You find in the family he began,
     You find in the village that ensued,
     You find in the whole world's multitude.
     How do I know this integrity?
     Because it could all begin in me.

[Krimel]:
> As we go about exchanging value in the world does the
> net value of the universe increase or decrease during the
> process or does it remain fixed.? When we give back
> value does it undifferentiate in the process and in so
> doing do we increase the total amount of undifferentiated
> value in the universe? Is this conversion of undifferentiated
> value into being a mechanical process like a jack-in-the-box?
> Does it follow some sort of rules of fluid dynamics?
> Is the reciprocal process the essential source or does it
> merely represent the essential source? Where exactly is
> this representation manifest? In being?

Value, as I understand it, is man's sensibility of Essence whose "net value" 
is absolute.  Essence itself is indivisible and cannot be perceived 
differentially.  Since man's awareness is relational, he relates value to 
the finite phenomena (beingness) that he "objectivizes" from his 
value-sense.  In my Creation hypothesis, existence is negated from Essence 
as a self/other dichotomy that is "glued together" by the value of the 
source.  Thus, value is a differentiated representation of Essence that is 
manifested in the objects and events of a relational universe.  Since we all 
observe the absolute source in the same relative way, our "quantitative" 
experience of objective reality is universal, while our "qualitative" 
(valuistic) realization is proprietary to each individual.  The "net result" 
of the life-experience is that what is negated as difference is affirmed by 
being-aware as value, which (from the absolute perspective) is the Oneness 
of Essence.

 [Krimel]:
> If value remained unactualized wouldn't it still have a history?
> How can it be driving mankind if mankind is creating it with
> superglue and Velcro? It just feels like something in there is
> going to void the warranty.

History is only man's incremental view of a valuistic otherness, the reality 
of which is his experience.  The biological brain is incapable of absolute 
cognizance, but the value-sense which is innate to each self affords an 
independent perspective of otherness as "being".  It is this sense of value 
that is man's inexorable link to the absolute source.

[Krimel]:
> Why do you say the mode of human existence is temporal?
> Isn't it spatial as well? Couldn't it be more than that?
> Maybe there are dimensions we don't recognize. Or maybe
> we recognize them but don't call them dimensions.

Space/time is the dimensional mode of human experience.  Value is the 
essence of that experience.  Existence could not be more than what is 
experienced because we create what we experience.

> How do you know that the ultimate source is not spacio/temporal? How do 
> you
> know anything at all about it? ...

How does Pirsig know that Quality is the "primary empirical reality"?

I don't "know" these things as objective facts.  I intuit them by 
introspection, logical analysis, and with the help of luminaries like 
Plotinus, Cusa, Eckhart, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Heidegger.  (I also try to 
rule out "maybes" according to the principle of Occam's Razor.)

Cheers,
Ham