[MD] The Menu/Reality issue

[Ham Priday]

[Krimel, to Ham, Ron and Marsha]:

> So for the three of you life, the universe and everything can be reduced 
> to
> mental events? Isn't that just a form of radical subjectism; even 
> solipsism?

Not if you understand that objects and events are phenomenal.  They 
represent our intellectual constructs of Value (or what Pirsig calls 
"pre-intellectual experience").
Now, if you are regard Value as "mental", then everything is subjective and 
reality is, indeed, a solipsism.  But this is not what Pirsig says. 
Instead, he equates Quality (Value) with Reality as primary to the S/O 
patterns of experiential existence.  These "patterns" are phenomena -- the 
experienced "forms" of Value that we objectivize as Being.

Existentialists posit Being as primary; Pirsig makes Value primary.  As an 
Essentialist, I agree that Value is primary to existence (i.e., SOM). 
However, like all existents, Value is derived from an absolute source from 
which all difference (time, space, identity, change) is derived.  My 
philosophy is founded on a metaphysics of Essence, rather than Quality or 
Value.  But neither the MoQ nor Essentialism can be properly conceived if 
physical reality is considered primary to Value.

But you already knew this, didn't you, Krimel?

Essentially yours,
Ham