----- Original Message -----
From: "Ham Priday" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7:08 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Fundamental Reality and Creation
To those whose metaphysical quest has been preempted by the pursuit of
"the intellect" --
Now that we have the intellect squared away, or at least in the throes of
being defined, I would like to take up the most fundamental of all
questions -- What is Reality and how does it create?
Hi Ham,
Which reality would that be, the inorganic reality, the biological reality,
the social reality, the intellectual reality or the code of art reality?
The "absolute reality is a solid block of concrete" analogy sounds absurd.
According to the MOQ reality is value/process/experience.
Marsha
Inasmuch as the world, the individual, experience, and intellectual
thought all participate in Reality, it seems to me that this is logically
the first question a philosopher should be obliged to answer. There's a
method to my madness, of course, and your answers can help resolve a
logical problem in my metaphysics that I've been struggling with for
years. It concerns the 'ex nihilo' principle, which has been disputed by
some here (for the wrong reasons, I believe), but I may have an
explanation that will satisfy them.
As a universal principle, I think most of us would agree that we can't get
something from nothing. Getting something from nothing refutes the laws
of logic, thermodynamics, relativity, and cause-and-effect. Even an
evolutionist understanding of creation places the beginning as the "first
cause", whether it's a big bang or an unbalanced mass of energy. Few, if
any, physicists accept the idea that an absolute void can give rise to
anything, let alone an infinite universe. Yet, the universe was created
and does exist, and I've been criticized for stating that nothingness is
the ground of its existence. Okay, so far?
Well, I'm about to propose that there is a singular variance to this rule
and I'll explain it using analogies, so please withhold your logical
arguments until you have a grasp of the concept. My idea has to do with
the reduction of an absolute.
Pretend for a moment that absolute reality is a solid block of concrete, a
block so large that it has no boundaries. Now, suppose a fracture occurs
in this concrete monolith, effectively dividing it in two. Since the
block occupies all of space, the "crack" would necessarily be
infinitesimal, like the imaginary line that serves to describe geometric
figures. Nonetheless, for all practical purposes, the block has undergone
a difference: it is no longer a unity but has spawned an "other" by virtue
of that infinitesimal fissure.
In my website thesis I use the analogy of the mountain climber who has
ascended to the highest summit and for whom further progress can only be
descent. Both analogies demonstrate that an absolute source is the
singular entity for which creation, difference, or the appearance of
otherness is exclusionary rather than additive. Note that they do not
refute the 'ex nihilo' principle. They do not assume nothing as the
primary source. What they suggest is that for an absolute source the
creation of difference is "reductive" in nature. Only an absolute entity
creates by "exclusion", which is to say that existence is not something
"added" to nothingness but, rather, the potential of nothingness to create
the appearance of divided otherness.
Whether you call the primary source God, Supreme Being, Dynamic Quality,
the Intellectual Level, Sensibility, Consciousness, Atman, or Life-force,
if you believe that this source is absolute, I submit that the ontogeny of
creation must follow the principle of negation (i.e., exclusion or
reduction) as outlined above.
I doubt that you'll find any clarifying statements from Pirsig on this
topic, but would like to see how you respond and to what extent you agree
with this proposition.
Thanks, folks.
Ham
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