[MD] The Quest for Quality

[Ham Priday]

Hi Bo --

> Having a transcendent source must surely be a great asset,
> particularly after stating that "take away ...etc".  and that
> nothing is left yet Essence remains.

I suspect you have misconstrued my Essence cosmogeny, for I never said "if 
[man's] awareness disappears nothing is left."

What I said was: "Take away cognitive awareness and there is no experience, 
universe, intellect, or quality."  Since none of these contingencies come 
into existence by their own power, they must be derived from a primary 
source.  That source is Essence.

> Ham, this is no irony. I would have accepted this if you had started
> from the Essence/ Differentiated Beingness split as fundamental,
> rejecting the Differentiated Beingness internal split (that necessarily
> must be the man/world one) After such a metaphysical shift Essence
> transcends the finitude of the said differential beingness  ... and kept 
> it
> there, but at several instances you have claimed that man is the final
> entity and that if his his awareness disappears nothing is left  ....and
> from THOSE premises Essence goes down the drain.

What "irony" are you challenging?  Essence is indivisible, thus cannot be 
split.  The fundamental (primary) division has to be between two 
derivatives: Sensibility and Otherness, linked by essential value.  From 
Sensibility comes proprietary awareness, from Otherness comes beingness. 
These are your existential ("internal"?) subject and object.  Together they 
create being-aware (of a differentiated world).  I have never posited man as 
the "final entity", so your complaint is unfounded.  Man is finite and 
fleeting -- hardly a transcendent, immutable entity.

> As said the first section above is valid and an exact match to Pirsig's
> first metaphysical regrouping that shifted the metaphysical slash from
> the previous Differentiated/Beingness (Subject/Object in his lingo) to
> Essence (Quality)/Differentiated Beingness (S/O). See?

No, I don't see.  And I'm not trying to match Pirsig's paradigm.  Again, in 
my ontology Sensibility and Otherness are the primary (i.e., metaphysical) 
contingencies of existential reality.  Subjects and Objects are the 
secondary (i.e., SOM) derivatives of value-sensibility.

> I leave it here. I have labored much over this trying to formulate
> it in a way that you must understand if you WANT to.

You have not mentioned Intellect in your analysis, so I'm still at a loss as 
to how it fits into your metaphysical scheme.  Are you going to quit on me 
before revealing its significance?

--Ham