[Ham] Nothing without its opposite (being) is an absolute void--the 'monism' of empty space. Being subtended by nothing, however, describes existence: i.e., things and events in space. A monad is undifferentiated 'oneness' in which opposition is equilivency. Clearly the experiential world that we call existence is not a monism, since it is both differentiated and relational.
[Krimel] Bo, as is often the case Ham addresses his comments to people without actually know who he is talking to. Since he comments to each of us in equal measure please pass this along to him. He speaks of nothingness as an absolute void, empty space. This is a major flaw at the core of Ham's "philosophy". Throughout, he makes 'nothing' into something and treats it as if it were something while maintaining a self delusion that it is not. Space even empty space is something. Nothing on the other hand is nothing. It is inconceivable. It is who and where you were before you were born. > [Krimel] > If Taoism or Buddhism sees this (dualism) context, but just makes > it even more elusive (the moon that various theories points to) > they don't resolve anything. > > What Pirsig is searching for is the most elemental of opposite pairs. > The mind/matter or I/Thou distinction is commonly held as primary in > the west and in Lila, Pirsig attempts to show the DQ and SQ are > even more fundamental. Again this is pure Taoism but he gets it all > muddled by insisting that Quality and DQ are the same thing and that > they are always good or have something to do with betterness. [Ham] The most fundamental contrariety is being vs. nothingness, and it becomes experienced as "being-aware". I totally agree that Quality is not fundamental from an ontological point of view, and that simply integrating patterns or levels of Quality does not reduce existence to a monad. Whether we define Quality or Value as "'betterness", "excellence", "rightness", or "Arete", the definition always presupposes a subjective referent -- that is, cognitive apprehension of an other. Unperceived Quality is an oxymoron. [Krimel] Even if one were to grant the validity of being and nothingness as a duality all one could ever speak of is the being part. About 'nothing' nothing can be said. At all, period. To then jump from being to awareness of being, Ham must take a huge quantum leap. Who says that being requires awareness? Descartes would say that awareness presumes being but that is a different matter. While I do not think that being requires awareness I agree that Value and perception are wholly subjective. So while Ham and I agree that perception requires a perceiver we disagree that the perceived requires a perceiver. [Ham] As I see it, there are two major fallacies in Pirsig's philosophy. The first is that a psycho-emotional response to something of value logically qualifies as the primary, undifferentiated reality. The second is that the intellect is not indigenous to the cognizant individual. They are "major" fallacies because, regardless of how we choose to 'levelize' reality, the whole MoQ thesis rests on these two propositions. [Krimel] I too see a chronic confusion among many between 'reality' as TiTs and reality as were construct it. I don't especially see this as a fallacy in Pirsig's philosophy since I regard the MoQ as being 100% about how we construct our internal realities. As a result I think Ham is wrong when he says that within the MoQ, "the intellect is not indigenous to the cognizant individual." I think Pirsig is saying that the cognizant individual is not separate from the reality she constructs. > [Krimel] > In Pirsig's description of random access he says that a > metaphysics of quality would be a metaphysics of randomness. [Ham] The theory of "random access" to knowledge (presumably by mankind) is unsupported by any epistemology I'm aware of, and would seem to be yet another MoQ fallacy. I question the assertion that a flawed metaphysics can "provide a pretty good guide" to a new reality perspective, and would humbly suggest that the flaws be corrected before presenting further analyses of this philosophy to the general public. [Krimel] Here Ham confesses randomness and random access. Random access is something we used to learn about in elementary school when they taught us to use the library. You rightly pointed out that we have random access to our memories, so it is really not 'new'. Ham fails to notice that there are whole courses on random access these days; particularly in the IT departments. Database management is a field unto itself and is all about random access. Kids can Google as a result and gain random access to the collected wisdom of all mankind. If this is a Fallacy in the MoQ, it is that Pirsig didn't run farther with it. Randomness is another story. Pirsig concludes that a MoQ would be an MoR but he turns away from it. Someone could compile an impressive list of philosophers who have pointed at randomness or chaos and turned away. They bring an argument to the brink of it and then head in another direction because obviously we can't go there. But as you point out for at least the past 20 years that's where we have been going. You even claim it is stale. I would say it is increasing integral to our understanding from physics to advertising. But we have a built in aversion and horror of chaos and uncertainty and I would claim this deep fear is what drives Ham's entire philosophy. Bo, be sure and pass all this along to Ham, will you? Oh yeah and tell him I laughed out loud to see that he put that hate filled essay on his "Values" pages. Values, what a laugh. 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