[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[Ham Priday]

David --


Ham said to dmb:
> Why is the MoQ vigorously anti-essentialist?  Maybe you can explain
> that to me.
> If essence is the ultimate reality that philosophers since Plato have
> searched for, by what postmodern hubris is its rejection praised?
> Is not Quality the very essence of reality for MoQists?  How can you
> say that a philosophy based on Quality is anti-essentialist?

dmb says:
> Bo asked the same question recently. After reading my description of
> essentialism he said, "Yes if that is essentialism I'm very much so" and 
> he
> also said, "but because DQ is part and parcel of the MOQ I wonder
> how you avoid being a Quality essentialist too". Here's how I answered
> the question... (It's mostly Pirsig quotes.)
>
> "That was why the Quality that Phædrus had arrived at in the classroom
> had seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was taken from the
> rhetoricians. Phædrus searched, but could find no previous cosmologists
> who had talked about the Good. That was from the Sophists. The
> difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving
> Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good
> was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, 
> ultimately
> unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way."
.....................
> "What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone
> to tell us these things?
>
> "It is what he was saying months before in the classroom in Montana,
> a message Plato and every dialectician since him had missed, since they
> all sought to define the Good in its intellectual relation to things."

But, David, these quotations relate to Plato's 'summum bonum' -- moral 
goodness -- not to his theory of essence.  Essence is not a synonym for The 
Good.  Here's a clear definition of Plato's essence by the webmaster of a 
philosophy site:

"Plato thought what we see in the physical world is a dim reflection of the 
true ideal thing.  For example circular objects are crude approximations to 
the ideal perfect circle.  Platonic philosophy aims to understand reality in 
terms of the ideals that capture the real essence that is dimly reflected in 
physical existence. ...The problem is that the essence we attribute to 
external objects is from our own experience.  It is not something that is 
part of the external objects.  A soft touch, sharp slap, beautiful sunset or 
ugly wound, are things created in us when we have particular experiences. 
We are not perceiving external reality as it truly is nor are we dimly 
perceiving some ideal platonic reality.  We are creating the world in our 
conscious experience.  There is a related external structure that our 
perception is causally connected to.  But the perception of, for example, 
color is far more a construction of our sensory and nervous system than it 
is an effect from light of a particular frequency."   -- www.mtnmath.com

Essence is the true nature of reality.  Pirsig alone posits it as Areté, 
Goodness, or Quality.  And this moral inference is not only epistemically 
incorrect, it dismisses the primary source of experiential reality upon 
which metaphysics is founded.  Morality is a social construct of man, not an 
indigenous property of existence.  That the physical universe is a "moral 
system" is a theistic concept that has nothing to do with classical 
metaphysics.  So here you are, claiming that the MoQ is anti-essentialist 
and anti-theist, while neither is true.

...dmb continues:
> We see this same paradox in LILA, where Pirsig says that philosophical
> mystics have historically shared, "a common belief that the fundamental
> nature of reality is outside of language; that language splits things up 
> into
> parts while the true nature of reality is undivided". He says, 
> "Historically
> mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics
> is too 'scientific'.  Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES
> about reality." He says, "The central reality of mysticism, the reality 
> that
> Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical
> chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it
> without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience
> independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions".

That Pirsig statement, "Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES 
about reality." is simple-minded, to put it kindly.  Metaphysics, Cosmology, 
and Ontology are all approaches to the study of reality.  Metaphysics is 
that branch of philosophy which deals with reality beyond the physical 
world.  It names theories and principles in the same way that applied 
science does.  To say that metaphysics in only "names" is like saying that a 
novel is only words, or that music is only notes.

Ham said:
> I would submit that Essence has at least as much empirical relevance as
> Quality does, plus a metaphysical foundation that the MoQ lacks.

dmb says:
> This is a good example of what I mean when I say the MOQ is not
> compatible with your thing. You've aired this complaint many, many times.
> The MOQ does lack a metaphysical foundation. That's pretty much
> what it means to be an anti-essentialist, a particular way of being an
> anti-essentialist. In that sense, it is not a lack at all. From a MOQer's
> perspective getting rid of foundationalism is like getting rid of poison.
> The MOQ is the antidote of choice. In this analogy, what you offer is 
> poison.
>
> I would also point out that Quality is not based on the evidence of
> experience. It is experience itself. Thus the alternative name for DQ
> is the primary empirical reality.

I don't know about you, but a lot of my experience is of the non-Quality 
kind.
A philosophy without foundation is a ship adrift in an ocean of ignorance. 
Where would science be without a foundation of laws and principles?  Should 
scientific researchers avoid them as "poison"?  Should philosophers reject a 
metaphysical foundation for fear that the truth about reality may poison 
them?

> I could be insincere, but at least I'm right.

The tragedy is that your are sincere in your irrationality.

--Ham