[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB and Ham

23 Aug. 

> 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.)

Ham's position is that the subject - the I - is the basic reality so don't 
put me in that league. My position is that MOQ's 4th. level is what 
spawned the idea about - and search for an essential reality and 
according to ZAMM it resulted in SOM, can't you get that into your 
head. They say the Norwegians were considered squareheads, but 
now I wonder ;-)    

> But why? Phædrus wondered. Why destroy areté? And no sooner had he
> asked the question than the answer came to him. Plato hadn't tried to
> destroy areté. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea
> out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He
> made areté the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was
> subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone
> before.

It is in MOQ's level light we must read ZAMM. It's clear as day that it 
describes intellect emerging from its social origin. If you have some 
other interpretation please tell. From these premises it's no wonder 
that Plato's tried to "destroy" the old social perception - the ubiquitous 
Aretê that no one to this day really know what was. He (Plato) 
represented the new intellectual age and in his - and the later Aristotle 
- work we see the outlines of things to come. Among them the 
"essence" concept, when description of reality was divorced from 
reality, when words (language) became something secondary 
compared to what it is about ...... and a million other S/O offshoots.   

Bo