[MD] Is it serious?

[Ham Priday]

Dear Marsha, [Ron quoted] --


> I am most curious, though, what Ham thinks is the real self.
> Some of his statements I could agree with, but not as an
> independent self.  -   But maybe Ham is not responding to
> my posts?  Maybe I've been too acrimonious. I suppose sugar and spice, and 
> everything nice isn't one of my
> active patterns.

No, Marsha.  I sense no acrimony in your responses, just the same old party 
rhetoric repeated at the bottom of all your posts.  But occasionally you do 
come up with an intuitive idea that blows us all away.  (More on that 
later.)

Pirsigians like to talk philosophy by splitting hairs.  They're not content 
to accept existence for what it is -- a self/other duality, so they've 
replaced duality with a tetrology of levels. They're not happy with 
experiential reality as a continous process, so they cut it up into "static 
patterns" said to "respond to Dynamic Quality".  They're not comfortable 
with a unified Self, so they divide it into a "small self" said to be "the 
objective observer" and a "large self" said to be "the universe".  And they 
call the result of all this parsing metaphysics.

[Ron]:
> A "radical metaphysics" is a metaphysic of the development
> of the large self of awareness one of your own private experience.
> The large self is Quality, the small self is the subjective observer
> in an objective universe, the large self IS the universe, aware.

When it comes to paradoxes, I tend to follow the principle of Occam's Razor, 
which states that "entities should not be multiplied needlessly. The 
simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable, and an explanation 
for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already 
known."

Therefore, I accept existence as what is self-evident -- the relation of a 
subject to its perceived objects.  Whatever I sense, feel, experience, or 
apprehend is known to me.  It is the cognitive awareness of my self 
identity.  I do not share this awareness with other individuals or some 
qualitative realm of the universe.  It is my my own being-aware, my 
proprietary self.  That self is neither small nor large, but integral to 
"me".  To deny this fact is to deny my existence.

Now, you said something to Ron that is not only significant but that bears 
on my concept of differentiated selfness and its perspective:

[Marsha]:
> Yesterday I started to wonder what it actually means that
> everything is always in a state of change?  Everything!  I'm thinking of 
> the water analogy:  If everything is water,
> and there is nothing that is not water, then there is no meaning
> to water, for there is no way of distinguishing a difference
> between water and nonwater.  Seems if you translate that into change, then 
> what we have actually defined as change is illusion.  And if our 
> definition of change is an illusion, how can anything be conceived of as 
> constant when everything is changing?

If objective reality were nothing but water, there could be no 
differentiated experience, value, morality, or freedom to choose.  That's a 
profound observation, Marsha, and it demonstrates why Difference is 
necessary for the realization of value -- not only difference in terms of 
what is perceived, but difference in the "agency" of perception.  As a 
system, existence is characterized by Difference and Relation.

The individuated agent of this system is the Self.  You and I relate 
(respond) to universal objects and events in different ways, which 
distinguishes Marsha's valuistic worldview from Ham's.  Neither view is 
absolute or more "truthful" than the other because all existential truth is 
relative.  Yet, difference is an absolute principle.  It separates 
Sensibility from Beingness as the primary dichotomy from which S/O existence 
is derived or actualized.  And it divides objects (in space) and events (in 
time) from the particular self that experiences them.  In this scheme of 
things, each self is a free agent of value, and the individual subject is 
uniquely positioned to realize Pirsig's euphemism that "some things are 
better than others."

So, with your help, I believe I've answered your question as to what I think 
is "the real self".  If you and I can offer any further insight on this 
question, feel free to ask.

Thanks and best regards as always,
Ham