Ham answers Joe
> IMO my existence is the unchanged "I am" and to talk about it > I have to admit my emptiness in the presence of a cosmic and conscious > impulse to change. There is a hierarchy. How I exist is not static. [Ham] Your existence is what changes in the "I am" because it is what ties your value-sensibility to being. As I said before, being is always in flux because it is constructed of value which we sense dynamically. We could not make value aware without differentiating it. I suspect you may be injecting some mysticism into my philosophy -- the idea of "the quiet Self within", for example, that supposedly is realizable by contemplating one's navel. Hi Ham, [Joe] As I said previously Aristotle made a division in existence between real existence and intentional existence. This division led to SOM and value was denigrated to personal opinion. An error which has colored thought for centuries. How is saying the sun exists, different from saying Joe exists? The order changes. I admit I am not quite as big as the sun, though I am a trifle overweight, but my existence is as real as the sun. Evolution is a change of order [Ham] No, I do not believe that anything differentiated is at rest, and selfness is certainly a differentiated entity. We may quarrel about whether it is an "existent" or not, since it can't be empirically defined as an object. But it is self-evident that your proprietary self is distinct from mine or anybody else's. [Ham, previously]: > We can describe existence from our knowledge of it, but we > can only define Essence conceptually, because we have no direct > experience of it. [Joe]: > I disagree! [Ham] How so? What is your direct experience of Essence? Or, if your reference is to DQ, what Quality do you experience that is undifferentiated, or (to use Pirsig's language) "unpatterned"? There is no "pure Quality" in the existential world any more than there is "pure Value". I can't seem to repeat this often enough: Everything in existence is differentiated. Ham [Joe] The order of evolution. Joe On 4/5 Joe said: > >> Hi Ham, >> >> IMO You deny time as a dimension. It seems to me that the delay that >> light takes to reach earth from the sun is a dimension proper to light. >> Do you also deny length, breadth, and height as dimensions? You deny >> motion, no space. You present an ontology that is impossible to discuss >> as I can’t experience your words. I am not fast enough! By your ontology >> I don’t exist, only Ham knows he exists by knowing nothing. Ham you are >> the primary source. Convenient! How does that make you feel? >> I am impressed! > > Your sarcasm implies that I have pulled off some deceitful trick on you, > that my propositions are twisting logic in some way to confuse you. I > assure you that this is not the case. > > First off, I do not "deny" anything. (That is your word.) Remember, I > defined existence as "appearance" and said that all knowledge is derived > from it. I also said that everything in existence is differentiated and > transitional. Existence is the actualized mode of Essence which happens > to > be framed in three dimensions (four, if you include time). We can > describe > existence from our knowledge of it, but we can only define Essence > conceptually, because we have no direct experience of it. The confusion > arises when we try to deal with both systems at once. Unfortunately, that > is what the philosopher is obliged to do when developing a metaphysical > hypothesis to explain reality. > > Suppose we just consider Time, as it seems to be your immediate concern. > IMO time is an intellectual concept to account for the fact that we > perceive > reality as a "process in transition." All events are experienced > serially, > from past to present, and to some extent projected into the future. > Because > we are directly aware of only "the present", which is different from "the > past", we say that this change is a process that moves from the past to > the > future. But while the serialization of reality into time zones is a > convenience to understanding, there is no justification for attributing > time > to metaphysical reality. > > Alan Watts once likened man's view of reality to someone unfamiliar with > animals who upon observing a cat through a picket fence describes the > experience as a head with ears and whiskers, followed immediately by a > larger body, and lastly by a furry tail. His point, of course, was that > from our finite perspective reality unfolds as a series of events in time. > The interruptions in the sequence are due to the incremental mode of human > awareness in which all phenomena are experienced as either "now" or "then" > and become knowledge only as a continuum of events. > > Why should reality be "incomplete or unfinished" simply because man's > organic sensibility is too limited to see it in its entirety? If > existence > is a constantly evolving process, it has no final destination or form. > But > suppose reality is a 'fait accompli', and we only see it differentiated as > existence? That's what I'm proposing, Joe. Motion, change, dimensions, > and > relations are all differentiated aspects of experiential reality as it > appears to man. The "deception" of appearance is due to the limitations > of > human perception. > > We live, work and play by the rules of a differentiated system that is > always changing and never finished. But we don't have to conclude that > the > experienced world is the true reality. (At least I don't.) > > What about you, Joe? > > --Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
