[MD] What is SOM?

[Ron Kulp]

dmb says:
Again, the original MOQer says otherwise. In the MOQ, where experience IS
reality, epistemology replaces ontology. Or, if you prefer, there is no
ontology except for experience. You could say there are no essences or
things-in-themselves. This is follows from radical empiricism, where
ontological categories such as subjects and objects are seen as reified
concepts, as abstractions mistakenly given concrete existence. There are
many, many ways to say it but sticking with the MOQ's empiricism and LILA's
art gallery example, Pirsig says,...

[Krimel]
Again your only point here is an appeal to authority. I can hear the
explosion in you head from here. But the truth is, "Bob, says" is a lousy
argument. Are you seriously claiming that you have not confused ontology
with epistemology but rather claim there is no ontology at all? Is this you
just being witty or are you saying literally there is nothing.

Even Ham knows that experience is a personal thing. On this particular point
the MoQ is entirely in the realm of subjective. When each of us has an
experience that experience is primary and we as individuals infer subjects
and objects from it. We distinguish self from other. Claiming that reality
IS experience the way you do confuses the reality of each individual with
the reality from which each of us emerges, inorganically, biologically,
socially and intellectually. This is not metaphysics it is psychology. 

Ron:
What is the difference between the reality of each individual and the reality they emerge from? Can you make that distinction? if not, why?
because you may only know your own experience and can never know what
"true" reality is, therefore how is it confused if the distinction
can't possibly be made or comprehended? 

In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. The concept originates with Aristotle, who used the Greek expression to ti ên einai, literally 'the what it was to be', or sometimes the shorter phrase to ti esti, literally 'the what it is,'
In the history of western thought, essence has often served as a vehicle for doctrines that tend to individuate different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties; in this eminently logical meaning, the concept has given a strong theoretical and common-sense basis to a whole family of logical theories

In social thought, essentialism as a metaphysical claim is often conflated with reductionism.

Ontological reductionism is the belief that reality is composed of a minimum number of kinds of entities or substances. This claim is usually metaphysical, and is most commonly a form of monism, in effect claiming that all objects, properties and events are reducible to a single substance. (A dualist who is an ontological reductionist would presumably believe that everything is reducible to one of two substances.)

An Appeal to authority, yes I know. But these are the standards by which we understand the terms.

Krimel, It perplexes me how you can understand that reality is composed of fields of energy yet still maintain that the self is a separate and distinct
"entity". How is this? 

 [dmb]
I'll remind you that at the end of ZAMM, at what I take to be the
philosophical climax of the book Pirsig says that Plato's Good and his own
Quality were almost identical. The difference is that Plato's Good was a
fixed and rigid thing while his Quality was dynamic. This does not mean that
it is arbitrary or capricious, as he puts it, but the difference between
them could very well be described as "ontological fixity". Plato had it but
the MOQ does not. 

[Krimel]
Regardless of where it originates the idea that dynamic quality is good or
better or best strips it of being meaningful or useful. It once again is
Pirsig pointing at the moon but missing the mark.

Ron:
" Regardless of where it originates" sheesh who are you sounding like?,
Greek "Good" was "excellence" or "virtue", Essentialism attributes excellence as a possession as an attribute of  a kind of person or of the way one thinks. It objectifies the concept, it makes the action an entity possessed. Doing this destroys the notion of Greek "excellence".

Greek Excellence is the state or quality of excelling, it is an act of doing. It is dynamic.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes every virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a "golden mean" closer to one of the extremes than the other.

Seneca, the Roman Stoic, said that perfect prudence is indistinguishable from perfect virtue. Thus, in considering all consequences, a prudent person would act in the same way as a virtuous person.

The same rationale was followed by Plato in Meno, when he wrote that people only act for what they perceive will maximize the good. It is the lack of wisdom which results in the making of a bad choice, rather than a good one. In this way, wisdom is the central part of virtue. However, he realized that if virtue was synonymous with wisdom, then it could be taught, a possibility he had earlier discounted. 

Ron: and here is the sinker:

He then added "correct belief" as an alternative to knowledge, proposing that knowledge is merely correct belief that has been thought through and "tethered". 


[Krimel]
In the SODV paper Pirsig discussed the physics of the 1920's and
occasionally claim that he understands that this is the current
understanding. I don't know enough physics to know whether this is true or
not neither does Pirsig and neither do you but it hardly puts him on the
cutting edge. What I have tried to show repeatedly over the past several
years is that the MoQ does have the potential to be relevant. What you keep
saying is that it isn't. Well so be it. You have done nothing to show how
the MoQ can be applied to anything or how it relates to anything but your
romantic fantasies. Well fine. It is and will remain a cult phenomenon as
long as this willful ignorance continues. 

Ron;
Here's a use, stop clinging to essentialist notions and use it as just one way of describing phenomena in lieu of THE way, which is what Dave was trying to say, it opens you up to other ways of looking at phenomena
which when averaged, may provide a MEAN which may be more accurate than
pure, swallowed hook, line and sinker essentialism of self-other
metaphysics.