[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[Ham Priday]

Hi Marsha, and a note to Platt --


> I made a correction below to authorship of two paragraphs.
>
> One of my first philosophy classes was titled, 'Epistemology and
> Metaphysics', and explained as 'What do we know and how do
> we know it?'  I really believe I was born with those questions
> written across my forehead, which has caused me more than
> a little alienation.
>
> I wish you had said how you thought my point-of-view is different
> than the official MoQ position. Mr. Pirsig, by using the word 'pattern',
> seems to be suggesting that not only Life, Growth, History, Learning,
> Culture, Society, ...[etc.] are experience (events and processes),
> but also rocks, automobiles, livers, elephants ....[etc.]  All static
> patterns of value are events/processes.  Do you think that this is
> where I've misinterpreted RMP?

Marsha, I didn't say YOU had misinterpreted RMP or the MoQ.  I only said 
that I certainly do not
represent it.  Platt and the other Pirsiginans here will have to decide if, 
or how far, you have swayed from the party line.  Since my interest is your 
epistemology, I could care less how "orthodox" it is.  In my opinion, NOBODY 
has got it right -- and that includes me!  Epistemology is one of those 
inaccessible truths that we can only philosophize upon.

The examples I gave you relate to reified constructs (of abstract precepts). 
The examples you added are all experiential (empirical) objects for which 
only the names are reified.  I'd hoped you would see the difference. I 
attended a wedding on Saturday in which there was a pastor, a bridegroom, a 
bride, a ring-bearer, and a very cute flower girl.  All of those 
designations are reifications for the ceremony.  Once the marriage was 
performed, they all became "normal people" like the guests in attendence. 
(All, that is, except for the flower girl who was very special to me.)

As I said before, levels and patterns are intellectual constructs of 
abstract precepts, like the 12-month calendar or the symmetry of a design. 
Calling every thing or entity (including sentient beings) a "pattern" only 
avoids having to cite subjects and objects; it does not eliminate them.  For 
that reason, I prefer to speak of objects and events as the experiential 
phenomena that constitute our (individual) existence.  In In my view all 
existence is differentiated process.  Even the most "static" rock is 
composed of swirling electrons in constant motion.

Now, this sort of reasoning annoys Platt because he looks to existence as 
the source of reality:

> Hey Ham,
>
> I think existence is permanent. I also think experience is permanent,
> reality is permanent and Quality is permanent. Processes and events
> take place within these primary presences. Otherwise, the concepts
> of static and dynamic become meaningless. "All is change" is self-
> contradictory.

If the universe came into being from nothingness (or some other source) and 
will burn out at entropy, according to the laws of physics, existence is not 
permanent.  Nor is it ultimate Reality.  (You've forgotten that I hold to a 
"higher" source which IS permanent, undivided and immutable.)  Value can 
only be realized in a relational system, and existence is the mode of 
experiential value.  The value of a thing is always measured in terms of 
something else.  If there were but a single object in the universe, it would 
have absolute value to the observing agent (subject).

In a semantic sense, that "single thing" is what Pirsig's 'DQ' and my 
Essence represents.  But we don't experience essentially, we experience 
differentially.  That is, we convert Essential Value into the relational 
phenomena that make up our dynamic world.  The "instrument" of that 
conversion is experience.in combination with sensibility and intellection. 
But the metaphysical foundation of experiential reality is neither subject 
nor object, selfness nor otherness, this nor that, but rather the Essence of 
all impermanent appearances.

I trust I haven't lost either of you, although I don't expect you to agree 
with this epistemology.

Thanks for your responses.

--Ham