[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Ham Priday]

Hi Kieffer --


> Hello Ham,
> [clip]
> I tried your thesis when it wasn't so long a
> few years ago - glancing at it again i still find your terminology
> inpenetrable and way too long to struggle with after balking
> at the first few paragraphs.

The thesis hasn't changed, although I've added a few quotes to it over the 
years.  The section that is most relevant to the SOM/MOQ concept is my 
"creation hypothesis" --www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm#reality.  I'd be 
happy to explain any part of it that has you bewildered.

> I think I had the particle idea after seeing your diagram of the
> circle with the line down the middle - also if essence has an
> ongoing effect in the universe then such a particle came to mind
> as being necessary for essence's handle on the universe.

The circle/semi-circle diagram is my attempt to demonstrate that the 
beginning of number is negation.  Things are divided by nothingness, and 
human experience creates the differentiated world of appearance by 
projecting nothingness into Value.  Because our experience is framed in the 
dimensions of time and space, we perceive events like evolution 
incrementally in time and assume that creation is a process. 
Metaphysically, however, creation is the "negational" mode of Essence which 
is a constant.

[Ham, previously]:
> Space/time awareness is the mode of human experience.

[Kieffer]:
> Accepted.

[Ham]:
> Essence is not subject to such dimensions. It transcends
> (encompasses) evolution and process because it is immutable
> and undifferentiated.  That's why it's incapable of finite description.

[Kieffer]:
> This is your projection.

I don't know what you mean.  It's my theory (hypothesis) for the cosmology 
of Essence.

[Ham]:
> 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.

[Kieffer]:
> No they are separated by their different qualities/properties.

That's your hangup (projection?).  Qualities and properties are attributes 
of existents intellectualized after they've been differentiated as separate 
entities.  We "inject" value with nothingness in order to experience 
beingness as finite entities.

[Ham]:
> 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.

[Kieffer]:
> So you do admit of a deity!

I wish you folks would get over your animosity toward theism and deity. 
After all, these are only labels for a primary, absolute source that 
transcends existence.  Besides, I said that creation is NOT something added 
to a deity.

[Ham]:
> My philosophy (Essentialism) is predicated on an immanent
> Source whose reality is known to us only by its Value.

[Kieffer]:
> This sounds similar to MoQ.

Interesting that you should notice that.  Indeed, Essentialism has Value in 
common with the MoQ, except that essentialists do not posit value as the 
primary source.  Rather, it is the individual subject (being-aware) that 
brings value into existence as being.  Without a sensible subject there 
would be no value, no being, no existence.  Value is the essential link: it 
is what draws the individuated subject to its undifferentiated  source.

[Kieffer]:
> We are only vehicles for the genes and memes; nature has
> given us the sense of ourselves as autonomous individuals.

If nature gives you consciousness and autonomy, then nature is YOUR "deity". 
But something has to create nature, just as something has to create you.  To 
say that this "something" is Quality (Value) is fallacious, because 
unrealized value doesn't exist.  Man is the "realizer", the cognizant agent 
who brings value into the world.  Essentially being-aware is 
value-sensibility.

[Kieffer]:
> Our apparent ability to discriminate value now drives human
> evolution, but this does not appear to be so for other forms of
> life on earth.

Value drives human beings in the course of history.  It applies to the 
evolution of the species only insofar as we sense the "process of nature" as 
valuable.
>\
[Ham]:
> 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.

[Kieffer]:
> But this sounds very similar to your 'immanent Source whose
> reality is known to us only by its Value' above.

It "sounds similar" only because Existence is actualized by the 
value-sensibility of the subject.  But experienced value is differentiated, 
so it can't be primary to objective reality.  We must differentiate value in 
order to objectivize a relational universe.

[Kieffer]:
> Ham, you have said that something cannot come out of nothing
> and this seems to me the starting point of your work; but I reject
> this idea for several reasons:
> i) the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts - we are only
> a collection of cells and yet those cells collaborate to give us mind.

Collaboration of cells and integration of data provide only the "content" of 
subjective experience.  This is the process of "cognition", often called 
"mind".  But fundamental awareness is not a "process"; it is a power or 
capability derived from the uncreated source.

> ii) if something cannot come out of nothing then where does your
> Source come from?

"Come from" is a causal term that applies only to a relational system in 
which events appear to emerge and change in time and space.  When I say 
"Primary", I'm referring to that which transcends process.  Since Essence is 
absolute and immutable, it is not caused or created and, unlike man, is not 
dependent on otherness (being).  From the perspective of Essence, there is 
no other.

> iii) and quoting Hawking 'if the universe is self-contained, having no
> boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end; it would
> simply be'.

What Hawking says is true if you believe in a pantheistic Reality (i.e., 
absolute being), and that is the worldview of existentialists, such as 
Heidegger and Sartre.  But then the existentialist has to ask: what created 
being, and where is "awareness" in being?   Since pure beingness is 
insentient, it cannot account for subjective awareness.  Which is why I'm an 
Essentialist rather than an objectivist like Hawking.

Have I helped you understand my cosmology any better, Kieffer?

Essentially yours,
Ham