[Arlo]: > Hmm. Can you try to answer this question without evoking > paragraphs of rhetoric? Did or did not the universe exist > before "man"? And explain to me how your cosmology > accounts for the first "man"? Does man appear fully formed? > Does he evolve out of another animal? And, while I doubt > you'll say the second, if so then how did this earlier > animal exist without "man" to experience it?
"Before" and "after" are time-related precepts to which we are all habituated as SOMists. So the fact that awareness "creates" our experience of the world does not change the way evolution works in our scientific (intellectual) interpretation of process. If that's too much rhetoric, I'll simply say that, since we experience reality as a sequence of events, Homo sapiens as biological creatures appear to have evolved from earlier primates in Darwinian fashion. Pirsigians would call this an SOM ontology, however, probably defining evolution as a space/time pattern of quality. What you fail to appreciate is the principle that experience is primary to existence. Prior to experience there is no time, space, change, or being. Experience creates being by differentiating value (by nothingness) into a diverse system of objects and events. Since human beings are 'beings-aware', awareness is proprietary to the individual. But because there is but one reality, the universe appears identical for each of us, relative to our individual locus in space/time. I should add that it isn't necessary to change our precept of a space/time universe for all practical purposes. But for a philosopher who believes in an undifferentiated, immutable source, some other cosmology is needed to account for actualized existence. Pirsig appears to have convinced a number of people that the world of appearances can be explained by compartmentalizing Quality. Other philosophers have postulated Being or Consciousness as the primary source. I find these metaphysical sources inadequate because they all presuppose a division of cognitive subjectivity and objective physicality. Instead, I opted for Essence which may be conceived as an absolute "Is-ness" that encompasses all without opposition, transition, or differentiation. Everything else is a reduced (redacted?) appearance of Essence. > And, I have no desire to "ponder" solipsism. > But thanks for asking. The essentialist ontology is not solipsism, although Essence itself may be. And thanks for the questions you have asked. Regards. 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/
