[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Kieffer [Arlo mentioned] --


Since I haven't had the pleasure of talking to you, you are excused for 
suggesting exactly what my ontogeny is NOT:


> Perhaps Ham is closer to a deist - a God or fundamental
> particle that does its bit and then sits back while the universe
> unfolds - no dogma, no religion.

If you will not read my thesis at www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm (at 
least before allowing Arlo to persuade you otherwise), allow me to correct 
your speculative assertion.

Essence is not a deity or a particle that creates a big bang and "then sits 
back while the universe unfolds."  That's the dogma I'm trying to do away 
with.

The very idea of the universe unfolding in time, like a wound clock 
automatically unwinding, is the illusion of finite awareness which 
experiences reality incrementally, as a time continuum.  Space/time 
awareness is the mode of human experience.  Essence is not subject to such 
dimensions.  It transcends (encompasses) evolution and process because it is 
immutable and undifferentiated.  That's why it is incapable of finite 
description.

All logicial propositions are based on the relational system we call 
existence.  Everything that exists is differentiated from every other by the 
nothingness that divides them.  Essence knows/has no nothingness; it is not 
an 'existent' but absolute potentiality.  Creation is not something "added" 
to a deity, but a negation (i.e., reduction) of Essence to actualize 
Difference.  This difference is what characterizes all of nature, including 
the value-sensible agent that views reality as a relational process.

My philosophy (Essentialism) is predicated on an immanent Source whose 
reality is known to us only by its Value.  As value-sensible agents, we are 
drawn to the source fundamentally by the will or "instinct" to survive, 
philosophically by the need to "know", aesthetically by the attraction to 
symmetry and order, and emotionally by our human compassion.  Thus, value is 
what drives mankind from differentiated existence back to the uncreated 
Source.  In other words, Essentialism is an anthropocentric concept of 
reality.  The mistake of Pirsig and his interpretors is to posit Value 
(Quality) as primary to existence, thereby rejecting the individual subject 
without whose realization there would be no value.

Now I ask you: is that Theism or Deism?  If you still think it is, then be 
my guest.  In philosophy it's the concept, not the label, that prevails, as 
Arlo certainly knows.

Thanks for this opportunity to clarify my views, Keiffer.  Now that we're 
acquainted, I look forward to exchanging ideas with you.

Essentially yours,
Ham