Marsha, that was excellent. Ham misuses certain
concepts for his liking. I believe this is called
pigeon-holing, correct? Becoming blind to certain
experiences due to the conditioning of ones present
experience or liking/valuing.
What Ham also has a habit of doing, is now that
you've outlined this much clearer usage of nihilism
and occam's razor, Ham will has the tendency to not
respond. Then later on, maybe in a few weeks or
months he'll bring it back up... again.
poetry,
SA
> >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.
>
>
>
=== message truncated ===
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