[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Bo --



> 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.

Ham's position is that the 'I' is the subjective half of the 
Awareness/Beingness dichotomy.  Basic (fundamental) reality is neither the 
knowing self nor its experienced other.  Ultimate reality is the Essence 
which encompasses sensible awareness, experiential beingness, and the value 
that separates all otherness.

Whether you "search for an essential reality" or not, it is metaphysically 
irrefutable that nothing comes from nothingness.  Everything that we 
experience is accountable to a primary source which, no matter how you 
define it, is the Essence of reality.  Pirsig's critical mistake was his 
failure to take metaphysics seriously and acknowledge that source.  In the 
last analysis his quality hierarchy is little more than an allegorical 
representation of experiential existence.

> 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.

The only "description" which man is capable of applies to the physical 
reality of his experience.  Ultimate realty is beyond physical description. 
Value, Matter, Difference, Evolution, Intellect, and Consciousness are all 
relational aspects of being-aware.  The closest approximation of a 
relational definition for Essence is Cusa's 'not-other' principle.

Regards,
Ham