[MD] Essentials for target practice

[Ham Priday]

Dear John --

[Ham, previously]:

> How do we know that an appearance (let's call it a "phenomenon")
> has aspects unless we recognize them?  Indeed, the aspects of a
> phenomon are what make up the appearance.

[John]:
> But many aspects cannot be witnessed first hand.  The moons of
> another planet, I cannot see with my unaided eye.  I read about the
> investigations of others and take their word for what they say is true.
> I can't possibly investigate for myself many of the aspects of existence
> that I believe and rely on and tell myself (and others tell me) are true.

"Appearance" relates to my third tenet: "Existence is the appearance of 
differentiated otherness."  As such, it is the direct referent of 
experience.  Something you may have read about the fourth moon of Jupiter is 
not an appearance, not experience, but second-hand data.  I doubt that your 
life depends on such specious knowledge.

You are uncomfortable, I surmise, with my theory of experience as the 
"objectivizer" of existence.  There all these unexperienced 
phenomena--quarks, neutrons, black holes, and the like--which seem to 
suggest that there's more to existence than "mere" appearance.  For example, 
existence must be an "ordered system"; otherwise, how could it support laws 
and principles that enable mankind to quantify and predict its evolution as 
a cause-and-effect paradigm?  How could science have advanced our knowledge 
of the universe and its dynamics over the centuries if existence were not 
more than the appearance of relational otherness?

Yet, we can only know what human cognizance is capable of fathoming.  When 
we conclude that the universe manifests "intelligent design", where do you 
suppose that intelligence resides?  When Mr. Pirsig says that we inhabit a 
"moral universe", by whose standard is that morality measured?  When Bo 
speaks of SOM and intellect as one and the same, what is the source of that 
intellect?

Do you catch my drift, John?

> What is the difference between evolutionary change and making?
> From outward appearance, they often seem identical.  If the issue
> is with agency, doesn't a flower  "make"  a sweet scent from the
> biochemisistry of its existence?

But genetics and fragrances aren't "things".  What constitutes a thing is 
being (and its delineation by nothingness).  But since you say that 
"demonstrably, there's no such thing as nothing," I'll leave that aside for 
the moment and deal only with "being".  I maintain that experience (a la 
sensibility) actualizes the appearance of being from value, including one's 
own being.  Considering that the MoQ equates Value with Quality, there is a 
certain parallel here with Pirsig's theory of quality patterns.  But whereas 
Pirsig would say Quality (Value) "has the individual" as a pattern, I say 
that the individual (sensibility) brings value into the world as beingness. 
Value-sensibility (the individual self) is the "agency" here, John.

> "Appearances are finally controlled by the functionings of the animal 
> body.
> These functionings and the happenings within the environment of the body
> are both derived from a common past, highly relevant to both.  It is
> thereby pertinent to ask, whether the animal body and the extemal regions
> are not attuned together, so that under normal circumstances, the
> appearances conform to natures within the environment.  The attainment
> of such conformation would belong to the perfection of nature in respect
> to the higher types of animal life....  We have to ask whether nature
> does not contain within itself a tendency to be in tune, an Eros urging
> towards perfection."
>
> A.N. Whitehead as quoted by Alan Watts

Whitehead's writing tends to be a bit obtuse for my taste.  What does he 
mean by the "common past" of body "functionings and happenings", and what 
are the "external regions"?  Does a "tendency to be in tune" connote 
systemic order?  I have several of Watts' books.  Could you provide the 
title of the one from which this quote was extracted?   Of course, I say we 
set the "tune" that nature plays, and whatever "eros" Whitehead is referring 
to is man's, not nature's.

> ...only a society can define an individual.

What about a dictionary?  This reminds me of Marsha's logic, that inasmuch 
as she is nothing but interrelating patterns she could not confirm that she 
had a self.

> I agree with your (and Ayn's)  disparagement of collectivism.
> But even as a body is more than a mere collection of organs,
> so is an individual much more than a collection of individuated
> experience.   I still hold with Pirsig's postulation of Quality as
> the best possible understanding of this "something more".

"Understanding" or simply a handy label?   An individual is indeed much more 
than a collection of organs or experiences.  He/she is the sole realizer of 
value.

> We will chat some more, I have some more reading to do,
> and a juicy quote comparing Kant and John Stuart Mill
> on "the good" that I'd like to run by you.

I like "juicy quotes", although I don't see the relevance of "goodness" to 
this discussion.

Be good,
Ham