[MD] Consciousness a la Ham

[Ron Kulp]

Bo and Dmb,

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.)

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. They say the Norwegians were considered squareheads, but 
now I wonder ;-) 

Ron:
To state this correctly you are saying that intellect, to you,
is essentialism, specifically objective essentialism.
   

> 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.

Bo:
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.

Ron:
Pirsig understands what it was, 
He, as you, conceptualized Aretê as an entity. Once he realized this, his
analytical house of cards collapsed, everything fell apart. All his work
became invalid.
Excellence is a performance, it is the act of exceeding social standards
It is "habitual excellence". It is something practiced at all times. The virtue of perseverance is needed for all and any virtue since it is a habit of character and must be used continuously in order for any person to maintain oneself in virtue.
Intellect without social excellence is tantamount to evil.

Plato did not want to destroy the social value of excellence and Good
he wanted to encapsulate it and teach it universally.

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

He wanted to teach wisdom, which wisdom is a product of experience.
wisdom became a definition, an ideal form. Instead of the product of experience. This is the beginning of where it all went wrong.
When Aristotle tethered knowledge to the truth of universally verifiable
objects, "the Good" became a universal entity.

Bo what you propose is everything Pirsig rails against, essentialism,
objectivism, the belief that intellect divorced from social meaning
is a higher form of "good" when "good" loses all it's meaning in that
way. "Good" becomes what is statically verifiable and DQ is virtually meaningless. Your Good has no regard for anything but itself.
Your MoQ reality is  cold and emotionless with no meaning other
than serving itself. Your MoQ is absent of wisdom and value.

The fact that your intellect sees the highest social level
values as evil should tell you that those intellectual
patterns are of a very low quality.