At 12:34 PM 10/10/2007, you wrote: >Dear Marsha -- > > > What do you know and how do you know it??? Below you wrote, > > "You must understand that the philosophy I call Essentialism originated > > with me and reflects my own concept of reality." Without a method of > > testing, a "reasoned hypothesis" may just be a wild guess. > >What is it about an original concept that troubles you? > >If you analyze any hypothesis, all it's saying is "let's suppose the >following is true." Your acceptance or rejection of it is a judgment call. >Is that a mortal sin or a perversion of philosophy in your view? Hasn't >Pirsig done the same thing? He's saying: Let's call reality Quality and see >if we can divide it up so that it can account for what we experience. >That's a hypothesis, Marsha, even if you don't recognize it. > >A wild guess? No, it's an "educated" guess, because it's based on some >knowledge of previous theories and is supported by the same kind of logic. >That makes it plausible and gives it credibility for those who study >metaphysics. Unlike scientific theories, the fundamental premises of a >metaphysical hypothesis can't be tested or proved empirically. But the >conclusions are testable by our own experience. Thus, Pirsig asks: Do we >not all seek goodness in our world? If morality is recognizing that some >things are better than others because they have a higher level of quality, >then Quality can be our primary empirical reality. Looked at this way, all >we're really doing by experiencing something is assessing its quality. > >Now that's an over-simplification of the MoQ, but it's enough of a paradigm >by which to compare Essentialism. Ham says: Nothing comes from nothingness, >so what exists must be derived from a primary source. The unprovable >hypothesis is that this source is absolute and uncreated. That's an >application of Occam's razor which states that "entities should not be >multiplied unnecessarily", meaning that the simplest of theories is >preferred to the more complex. It gets rid of the need for an infinite >regression of prior sources. > >Then, Ham says, experience demonstrates that everything in existence is >differentiated and relative, including the experiencing subject. What if >the primary source is the absolute synthesis of all difference? Cusanus >theorized that possibility and actuality are co-dependent in existence but >coincide in the non-contradictory Source. Hegel postulated that "the >(inward) negation of Essence is manifested in its (outward) appearance, and >the completion of this identity between inward and outward is Actuality." >I've woven these theories into a metaphysical rationale for Essence. In >short, it asserts that actualized existence is a negation (i.e., experienced >reduction) of Essence whereby a sensible agent (the self) experiences the >value of its beingness in terms of finite things and events that appear in >the world. > >Preposterous? Incredible? Fantastic? Maybe. That's for my readers to >decide. My own view is that it is no more fantasy than the MoQ, which by >rejecting a metaphysical source has neither a logical foundation nor an >implied purpose to support it. > > > I cannot say that this little "talk" hasn't been helpful. Yet, I have > > this > > strange desire to paint a woman holding a whip. [Blackbird fly, > > Blackbird fly... Into the light of the dark black night.] > > > > It is the time of the dark moon. Is it a snake or a rope? > >Sado-masochism again? You seem to have a fascination for this bizarre >behavior, Marsha. Have you by any chance been reading the Marquis de Sade >lately? ;-)
Greetings Ham, Did you just differentiate 'Sado-masochism' and the 'Marquis de Sade' from a reference to a whip? How did you mind get there? Maybe I should have asked about a snake and a whip. Actually, I'm reading, for comic relief, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Ecco. It mentions "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". I said your Essentialism _may_ be a wild guess. The MOQ offers experience as a method of testing. I don't see that your logic offered anything. But it's yours, and that seems to be enough for you. It's not your original idea that bothers me, it's your trotting out the word nihilism, with all it's negative connotation, to discredit the original idea of others. About your use of Occam's Razor, from Wikipedia: "Occam's razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a recommendation of the simplest theory come what may[6]. (Note that simplest theory is something like "only I exist" or "nothing exists"). Simpler theories are preferable other things being equal. The other things in question are the evidential support for the theory[7]. Therefore, according to the principle, a simpler but less correct theory should not be preferred over a more complex but more correct one. For instance, classical physics is simpler than subsequent theories, but should not be preferred over them because it is demonstrably wrong in some respects. It is the first requirement of a theory that it works, that its predictions are correct and it has not been falsified. Occam's razor is used to adjudicate between theories that have already passed these tests, and which are moreover equally well-supported by the evidence.[8] Another contentious aspect of the Razor is that a theory can become more complex in terms of its structure (or syntax), while its ontology (or semantics) becomes simpler, or vice versa.[9] The theory of relativity is often given as an example. Galileo Galilei lampooned the misuse of Occam's Razor in his Dialogue. The principle is represented in the dialogue by Simplicio. The telling point that Galileo presented ironically was that if you really wanted to start from a small number of entities, you could always consider the letters of the alphabet as the fundamental entities, since you could certainly construct the whole of human knowledge out of them (a view that Abraham Abulafia presented much more expansively)." And, of course, there are those anti-razors. The section on Religion is interesting, but only mildly so. Marsha 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/
