[MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy

[Ham Priday]

Hi Michael [Platt mentioned] --


>As one who has taken positive things from what you
> both say, following your baseball game has been an
> interesting experience!  Keep it up!

Glad you found it interesting, but I'm not a sportsman and the baseball 
metaphor was a losing game for me.  Platt is decent fellow with a perceptive 
mind, a love of esthetic beauty, a geat sense of humor, and a flair for 
journalistic writing that is unmatched in this forum.  He just can't seem to 
get a handle around metaphysical concepts (mine anyway).

> I wonder, and this is not directly at you Ham... how do we
> define nothingness? [Here I am, the eternal linguist!] The
> very word contains "thing" which in itself is obviously not
> a universally accepted concept.

How true, Michael, and your question has been tossed around here once or 
twice.  Is nothingness simply empty space with things floating in it, or is 
it an absolute void with no content?   I see nothingness as relative to 
"thingness", as a contingency of what exists.  A hypothetical "state" of no 
universe and no cognitive agency is inconceivable, and we certainly wouldn't 
be around to talk about it!  Yet, it's the starting point for all 
metaphyical theory.  Could such a non-existent state "be", or would its 
"being" consist of a primary source or Creator?  I think I know how you 
would answer, but it is not the answer you would get from 99% of the folks 
here.  Even Pirsig's Quality is meaningless in the absence of experience.

I struggled with this paradox at the outset of developing my philosophy of 
Essence.  My conclusion was that whatever is REAL is not what we experience, 
but that without a fundamental Reality there could be no existence or 
experience.  The Being and Nothingness of Sartre and the existentialists, 
which I was heavily into at the time, did not address the issue of an 
ultimate reality.  They were talking about 'existents' -- things or 
phenomena that couldn't exist or appear without a supra-natural source that 
transcended them and made possible their actualization.  Because "thingness" 
and "beingness" are not the nature of the ultimate source, I decided that 
the terms "being" and "existing" were not only philosophically ambiguous but 
totally inadequate for metaphysical conceptualization.

The downside of this decision was that when I'm asked if  Essence "exists", 
I have to say no.  It's the same answer if one chooses to regard Essence as 
a deity.  Now, you may say I'm only postulating that God or Essence is "not 
a thing," but there's more to my argument than that.  Essence is absolute, 
unconditional  and immutable.  And the nihilists here will call me 
hypocritical for defining Nothingness and "passibng it off under a disguised 
name".   But I'm sure you can appreciate my position, Michael.

> I have no problem conceiving that the Big Bang came from
> "nothingness"; if one can accept that "everything" as we know it
> was contained in an infinite point [the implications on time seem
> to be ignored in this scenario; eg how can you have a "before"
> if there is no "now" or "after"?] why is it any more difficult to
> accept it all came from nothing? Until we can conceive
> every"thing", we will have no choice but to accept that
> some"thing" can come from no"thing".

I beg to differ.  An infinite [perhaps you mean "infinitesimal"] point is an 
existent, so is still a "thing".  Nothingness divides or separates entities 
(beings) but it can't create them.  But you've caught another astute point 
that I can't seem to get across to others: the space/time dimensions by 
which we intellectualize our reality. They're "built into" human experience, 
not indigenous to an external reality.  Thus, time is a human precept only 
because we experience events serially; space becomes real only because the 
things experienced are relative to our unique locus in the universe. 
Incidentally, I've noted a trend by astro-physicists to consider the Big 
Bang as just one event in a universe with no beginning.

Thanks for your thoughts, Michael, and for the critical insights you've 
brought to this forum.

Essentially yours,
Ham