[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[Ham Priday]

Tim --


> Ham,
> we may be getting somewhere... but I'll keep my expectations
> in check this time.
>
> Let me say, if I had come across your thesis randomly, without
> having the expectation of a real discussion with you (and thank
> you for taking so much of your time and effort on me too!),
> I'm almost sure - but not quite sure! - that I would not have
> finished it.  Let me just suggest that I think you will have the
> greatest success if you can meet those you are teaching more
> than half way.  I don't know if you think you can do that to
> success though.  Anyway, this is all just to say that I think you
> should give my ideas based on 'impossibility' a close inspection.
> This is even more so if it ends up confirming your essence!

I'm willing to meet even antagonists half way, but giving up Essence 
destroys the entire thesis.  Without the "fundament", as you call it, there 
is nothing -- not even you and I arguing.

[Ham, previously]:
> I regard metaphysics as an attempt to theorize reality as an
> all-encompassing system.  Anything less is for me an incomplete
> thesis.  Certainly the source of creation is fundamental to Essentialism.

[Tim]:
> then why have you replaced it?  (I hope this comes off in a nice way,
> just mildly provocative.  I am trying to *spur* you to see essentialism
> as I see it: either you will help me see it right, or I will help you
> see it right; or, more likely, we will both see that we were not quite
> right.)

What have I "replaced"?

[Ham]:
To ignore [the source] as a matter of "personal preference" is tantamount to 
a physicist saying "I'm going to ignore the law of the conservation of 
energy because I cannot happily submit to it."

[Tim]:
> But this is not fair from my perspective.  From my perspective it is not
> I, but you who is ignoring it as a matter of personal preference. ...

Ignoring what, Tim?

> If I continue with your example of the conservation of energy,
> I see your 'essence' as a term which always sums to zero by itself,
> such that there is no need for me ever to carry it in to the energy
> balance.  So why burden myself with it?  I'll wait for this, just
> want to help you see where I'm coming from now.
>
> IF the proprietary self is a negate of essence, which is merely
> sensible of value, what good is that?
> How can one negate differ from another negate?  How can a
> timeless and eternally uniform essence create different negates
> merely by negating its timeless and eternally uniform self ---
> producing different nothingness-es?!

What good is a negate that is sensible of value?  Think about what you are 
asking, Tim; for only an agent negated from the Source can realize the value 
of the Source from which it is estranged.  That's precisely where morality 
comes from.

> and again, how does mere sensibility of value permit a nothingness
> to will anything?  If we start as nothingness... and if every other
> proprietary I starts as nothingness...  and we have no direct access to
> essence...  from whence comes the *power* to will?

The power of will is to desire, and it comes from value-sensibility.  We 
want the value of life, so we choose to do all we can to survive. We aspire 
to be, possess. or identify with what we sense is desirable, which is why we 
work to achieve it.  In following our desires, individually and 
collectively, we change the course of history.  Is that not enough "power" 
for you?

 [Ham]:
>  If the self doesn't realize the Quality it is a pattern of,
> where or what is the Quality?  If Quality is the "operating
> agent" of existence, what purpose do 'I' serve?

[Tim]:
> Wisdom would have me avoid this.  But...
> first, as I understand 'realize' is part of your physics which I might
> actually have to leave alone due to the fact that I only understand it
> generally.  But regarding the latter, Quality is ubiquitous. Within the
> MoQ, I am not disconnected from Quality, as your proprietary I is
> disconnected from essence.  While Quality produces my
> proprietary self (if I am to use the language of the MoQ, to which
> I have not fully subscribed), I too am Quality - or at least I have it
> ('Lila has quality').  But Quality is not uniform and unchanging.
> There is a range: low Quality to high Quality.  The purpose you
> serve is choosing.  Perhaps, this was a real loose treatment.

Again, Quality (with or without the initial cap) does not exist until it is 
realized.  It doesn't float around the universe independently, waiting for 
us to capture it.  I don't see why this poses a problem of understanding. 
Your sense of Quality (Value) is what connects you to the essential Source. 
Without it you would have no awareness. Whether you yourself are (have?) 
Quality is someone else's judgment call.  And the fact that we are estranged 
from the Source is what affords us the freedom to choose our actions.

[Tim]:
> Remember that within the MoQ even the inorganic can realize quality.  It
> doesn't take a genius.

I prefer not to remember that.  It doesn't make sense to a non-moqist.

> Again, my perspective is that Value, and your physics of negation,
> your ontology, might all be valid even if 'essence' is to go away!
> Like I said before, it seems that 'essence' is hovering over all this,
> non-essentially as it were, and that there can be other formulations
> that reproduce value, and your physics of negation, a proprietary I,
> etc.  And I think you are missing this perspective because you are
> holding on to a wordplay, that nothingness is really nothingness.

Look, Tim -- call it God, Oneness, Absolute, Creator, or Quality if you 
wish.  There's nothing sacred about the word "Essence".  But you can't get 
something from nothing (unless, as someone recently said, you're the 
government).  Ex nihilo nihil fit [nothing comes from nothingness] is the 
basic principle of metaphysics.  You'll be gone long  before it is.

> But I don't think you have given it a chance yet.  Listen Ham, back a
> week or two ago, or whenever it was that I got frustrated with our
> conversation, I got frustrated because I felt, intuitively, that you
> were calling my fundament 'nothing'.  I mentioned that I thought your
> fundament might rather be 'nothing' - and then I took a break.  I am
> challenging you to do the same.  Or at least to see things from my
> perspective now.  I don't think your monistic essence will ever gain
> purchase because it is too much to hold that there can be a real
> nothingness; that is, that there is a nothingness which is a negation of
> essence, but it isn't really other because it is nothing.  That nothing
> is something!  And if it is something, I don't see how your conception
> of essence can be maintained.  But your physics of negation of a 'new
> essence' might be just as valid.

What does "a real nothingness" mean to you?  In an existential sense, 
nothingness is the absence of "thingness", empty space or a void in the 
objective world.  In a metaphysical sense, nothingness is a synthetic 
"other" that is estranged from Absolute Essence which can have no 
"otherness" beside it.  So, in neither case is nothingness "real".  But as a 
"negate" of Essence we participate in a world of appearances, unaware that 
it's all an illusion.  Only Value is real, because it's essential.

> Pirsig never equated his Quality to your Value.  (Did he?)

Yes.  I don't have the exact reference (it may be in his SODV presentation) 
he posited the equation Quality = Value.  Perhaps Horse or one of the 
charter members will provide that source for us.

> and even though he did equate quality and value (he moreso
> equated quality and morality), Quality was the source of quality.

One would hope that he accepted Quality as quality itself, not its source.

[Ham]:
> Value is positive, "essential", and functionally dynamic in existence.
> It does not "divide" -- it "affirms".

[Tim]:
> Why can't 'divide' and 'affirm' be two sides of the same coin?  Just
> like your proprietary self is an affirmed self specifically because it
> is cut off...

The two sides of the coin are "negation" and "affirmation".  By negating 
"otherness" we affirm the finite value of being.  The principle as I have 
postulated it is:
We affirm the Value of Essence (incrementally) by negating the otherness of 
its being.

> If you can come to my side for a second... something is.  Don't worry
> about impugning its absoluteness.  nothingness is impossible.
> Something that delineates and separates existents should get a proper
> name: essential delineator maybe.
>
> now, within the MoQ, I have suggested thinking of Quality as delineator:
>
> so, to help, I have suggested the substitution of 'Quality' for
> 'nothingness':

This doesn't help me, and I doubt that it helps Pirsig.  As I said before, 
all of existence is differentiated by nothingness.  Being itself is defined 
by nothingness -- our nothingness.  Even if Value has a polar function 
("positive and negative", for example), it may account for our 
discrimination in desiring or choosing one thing over another, but it 
doesn't "delineate" objects.

> Now Ham, these words are yours but for the substitution of one
> string of letters for another.  I can understand if you don't like it,
> but do you hate it?  If so, Why?  Is it due to the overtones that
> 'Quality' is burdened with?  Well then, why not:

In addition to the above logic, Value is an essential property, which means 
it cannot be divided, even though we sense it differentially.  We can 
penetrate the experienced world with our nothingness and thereby divide it; 
but we can't project Value that we don't have at the illusion that we 
create.

I'm sorry, Tim, but your word substitutions and analogies are not just 
symbols, they define a concept that is a perversion of what I have theorized 
and believe in.  If you are trying to accommodate Essentialism to the MoQ by 
making Quality (Value) a "delineator", it won't work for me.  Let the 
Pirsigians tell you if it works for them.

Meanwhile, if you need additional "proof" for Essence as a necessary Source, 
I'll try to
oblige you with a logical argument.

Cheers,
Ham