[MD] What is SOM?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Arlo --


> In your philosophical opinion, Ham, did man "evolve" out
> of some "other" (perhaps ape, monkey, whatever) or did
> man "appear" fully-formed "as is" at some point in the time-line?

You've asked me this before, and I've acknowledged that, from the 
existential or causal perspective, Home sapiens evolved from more primitive 
creatures as per
Darwin's theory of natural selection.  But the biological creature is not 
what I mean by "self-awareness", as you surely must know.  Nor do I mean 
intellect or the body of human knowledge in the collective sense.

I defined the subjective self (in the first person) as follows for Joseph, 
before he massacred it:

> I am my conscious awareness, the subjective Knower of my
> reality. Take away all intellectual, conceptual, and relational
> elements from my consciousness, and I remain that which
> "knows". This is simple, basic, and self-evident to everyone
> with the single exception of those weird Pirsigians who insist
> that subjectivity is a myth.

Subjective awareness is whar Kant and other philosophers have called 'noue'.
Evidently, Pirsig does not recognize it and his MoQ has no place for it.  I 
stand by my position that in the absence of awareness there is no 
experiential reality.  So, if Pirsig's theory that Experience = Reality is 
true, it follows that without awareness there is no universe.

Regards,
Ham

/