[MD] Essentials for target practice

[John Carl]

Dear Ham,

Ham:

"Appearance" relates to my third tenet: "Existence is the appearance of
> differentiated otherness."


John:

Appearance relates to sight.  What about the blind men confronting the
differentiated experience of the otherness of the elephant?

Existence has to be more than appearance.  Appearances can be deceiving, but
the fact of existence is not.

Ham:


> 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.
>
>

John:

My life does depend on second-hand knowledge, Ham.  Perhaps not that
particular knowledge of the celestial spheres, but my whole life is composed
of second-hand knowledge consisting of admonitions and rules that I got from
others, and I could not possibly test myself.

Ham:

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?
>
> John:

You put it better than I could, but yes, that is at the heart of my
"discomfort" - or as Pirsig posits - my lack of Peace of Mind.


Ham:


> Yet, we can only know what human cognizance is capable of fathoming.



John:

We only know what we know.  True.  And sometimes not even that.  But
"knowing" is often synonomous with "guessing" and thus we can be wrong about
so much that we think we know.  This "knowing" is a slippery thing to grasp
and define and beat each other over the head with.

Along the lines of a differing thread, knowing must include a basic humility
in order to be a valid known.

And ultimately "is capable of fathoming" is impossible to fathom.  History
demonstrates a progression of capability.  Intellectual development is
directional, not merely random, with the memory of the past informing the
conceptualizations of the future.


Ham:



> 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?
>
>

John:

Here is my thinking on the issue you raise.  If there is any designer or
creator that stands outside the universe, ex niliho nilo doesn't fit.  For
as part of the universe I can only see the universe, not what stands outside
of the universe.  Thus I should just assume that its my job to think about
what I find around me - the universe, rather than take on a hubristic
assertion about things that are so far over my head that they make the very
metphor "over my head" silly.

Which is also why I take as dim a view of atheism as I do religion.

But evolution and the forward march of intellect, going in one direction,
gives me the idea that the cosmos around me is directional.   Is
intelligent.  I exist and am part of a Quality Cosmos that forms me and is,
in a way, my only revelation of any "god".  The experience of this
directionality, the pull on my compass, so to speak, is as immediately
empirically evident as any "fact" produced by the evidence of my senses. And
yet this directionality is NOT evident to my senses.  It is only evident to
a certain idea about ordering the evidences of my senses.  It's a "ghost" in
Pirsigian terms.


Ham:



> Do you catch my drift, John?
>
>

John:

Do you catch mine, Ham?

 Ham

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.
>
>
John:

Well I've heard it before Ham, and it's an irreconcilable conflict with my
worldview.  How can an individual be anything but a valued part of the
whole?  There was a time I was not valued, and I was not.  There will be a
time when I'm no longer valued as a biological entity and then part of me,
the biological part, will not be.

But if I'm valued intellectually, then that part of me could possibly live
forever, even as part of Plato is still alive today.  That's where Pirsig's
levels help us to understand something important about the levels of being,
and how to deal with our mortality.

What I fear you miss with your fundamentalistic individualism, is the proper
attitude towards death and non-being.





>  "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
>>
>
>
Ham:


> Whitehead's writing tends to be a bit obtuse for my taste.



John:

Coming from you Ham, that is really rich!


Ham:

What does he mean by the "common past" of body "functionings and
> happenings",



John:

Well that refers to the directionality of evolution.  But there's a better
term for understanding it - DQ at the second level.  Also, I think the term
"coEvolution" is a better one, signifying that evolution is certainly not an
individual thing!    Evolution is a narrative and you need more than one
character to make a story.

Ham



> and what are the "external regions"?



John:

He's talking about environment.  The attunement of the organism and its
environment - or as Pirsig called it in ZAMM - Quality.

Plain as the nose on your face (and that's plain to see) but indefinable.
Don't feel bad if you have a hard time understanding, Ham.  It's a tricky
thing to grasp for some people.

Evidently.

Ham:


>  Does a "tendency to be in tune" connote systemic order?


John:

You ever tune a guitar Ham?  And say to yourself when it sounds right, "ah,
all is within systemic order."   I bet you have, now that I think about it.

Ham:


>  I have several of Watts' books.  Could you provide the title of the one
> from which this quote was extracted?



John:

My only one, Psychotherapy East and West.  It's one of my favorites.  Not of
Watts, cuz it's the only one I have of Watts, it's one of my all time
favorite books period.  Got a lot of stuff in there that sounds very
Pirsigian to my ears.


Ham


> Of course, I say we set the "tune" that nature plays, and whatever "eros"
> Whitehead is referring to is man's, not nature's.
>
>
John:

Uh Ham, you can't be that pathetic.   You must understand that to have an
erotic relationship, it takes two.

Two that are fundamentally different, and fundamentally attracted.


Ham:


>  ...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.
>
>

John:

Actually, the smart-alecky dictionary crack reminds me of Marsha.

I always miss Marsha, when she's away.

Ham:


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

John:

Well hopefully you will.  Goodness is relevant to everything.


Juicy Quote?  Hmmm... Ok, how about thick and meaty in honor of BBQ'ed steak
everywhere today on this glorious 4th.

We shall reach indeed in the end the conception of an Absolute Thought, but
this conception will be in explicit unity with the conception of an Absolute
Purpose. Furthermore, as we have just asserted, we shall find that the
defect of our momentary internal purposes, as they come to our passing
consciousness, is that they imply an individuality, both in ourselves and in
our facts of experience, which we do not wholly get presented to ourselves
at any one instant. Or in other words, we finite beings live in the search
for individuality, of life, of will, of experience, in brief, of meaning.
The whole meaning, which is the world, the Reality, will prove to be, for
this very reason, not a barren Absolute, which devours individuals, not a
wilderness such as Meister Eckhart found in God, a*Stille Wüste, da Nieman
heime ist*, a place where there is no definite life, nor yet a whole that
absorbs definition, but a whole that is just to the finite aspect of every
flying moment, and of every transient or permanent form of finite
selfhood,—a whole that is an individual system of rationally linked and
determinate, but for that very reason not externally determined, ethically
free individuals, who are nevertheless One in God. It is just because all
meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which
the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment,
of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of
individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the
Absolute Meaning of the world. This, I say, will prove to be the sense of
our central thesis; and here will be a contrast between our form of Idealism
and some other forms.



Be good,
>
> Ham <http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
>


I am

John