[MD] Consciousness (explained?)

[Ham Priday]

Hey, Platt --


> Correction: Platt prefers "aesthetic sensibility" because he,
> while enjoying art and music, believes value experience goes
> much wider and deeper.

I do too, Platt.  Which is why I define the sensibility referent as "value" 
in the broad sense rather than narrowing it down to esthetics.

> I agree with Pirsig's "preintellectual awareness" explanation
> from ZAMM that DMB reproduced in his Aug. 19 post.
> It describes the source and creative role of aesthetic sensibility.
> I suggest you read and absorb it for a fuller understanding of
> the MOQ.

I have read this passage which relies mainly on Poincaré's theory of the 
'subliminal' to support Phædrus's train of thought.  Poincaré postulated a 
subliminal self as a separate  entity from the subjective thinking self. 
Although I haven't studied Poincaré's epistemology, I find it difficult to 
imagine the subliminal as anything but the subsconscious mind, which was the 
unsubstantiated basis for psychoanalysis as practiced by Sigmund Freud and 
Karl Jung.

In fact, Poincaré himself referred to it as the "unconscious".  In his 
"Foundations of Science" he recalls having been unsuccessful in solving a 
mathematical problem.   "Disgusted with my failure, I went to spend a few 
days at the seaside, and thought of something else. One morning, walking on 
the bluff, the idea came to me."  He also compares this unconscious approach 
with conscious effort: "...it is not purely automatic; it is capable of 
discernment; it has tact, delicacy; it knows how to choose, to divine. What 
do I say?  It knows better how to divine than the conscious self, since it 
succeeds where that has failed."

Applying metaphors like "beauty", "harmony", and "elegance" to intellectual 
or scientific concepts to make them seem esthetically derived is begging the 
question in my opinion.
In any case, such appraisals are made "after the fact", rather than as a 
function of the actual problem-solving.  And while I can appreciate your 
emphasis on the esthetic as more suggestive of "qualitative" value, I think 
it overlooks many other aspects of experience which are, even by Pirsig's 
epistemology, value-based phenomena.

> As for my support of your metaphysics, I will only agree to it
> when you change your Essence to Quality and reject the
> business about our being its "agents" so that your subject/object
> premise and philosophical Idealism can be maintained.

That won't happen, Platt, because Quality and Value are both subjective 
realizations
requiring a sensible agent.  There is no point in being the subject of an 
objective world if value is not realized.  It would be a wasted life, as I 
think you already know intuitively.

> But, it's good to see you moving towards acknowledgment
> of quality reality.

I know and experience a finite reality that manifests a diverse range of 
qualities.  But I  acknowledge an absolute reality that has no need of 
diversification.

Thanks for your thoughts and candor, Platt.  For the present, at least, it 
appears we'll have to settle for partial agreement.

Essentially yours,
Ham