Greetings, Bo --
Ham's position is that the subject - the I - is the basic reality so don't put me in that league. My position is that MOQ's 4th. level is what spawned the idea about - and search for an essential reality and according to ZAMM it resulted in SOM, can't you get that into your head.
Ham's position is that the 'I' is the subjective half of the Awareness/Beingness dichotomy. Basic (fundamental) reality is neither the knowing self nor its experienced other. Ultimate reality is the Essence which encompasses sensible awareness, experiential beingness, and the value that separates all otherness.
Whether you "search for an essential reality" or not, it is metaphysically irrefutable that nothing comes from nothingness. Everything that we experience is accountable to a primary source which, no matter how you define it, is the Essence of reality. Pirsig's critical mistake was his failure to take metaphysics seriously and acknowledge that source. In the last analysis his quality hierarchy is little more than an allegorical representation of experiential existence.
He (Plato) represented the new intellectual age and in his - and the later Aristotle - work we see the outlines of things to come. Among them the "essence" concept, when description of reality was divorced from reality, when words (language) became something secondary compared to what it is about ...and a million other S/O offshoots.
The only "description" which man is capable of applies to the physical reality of his experience. Ultimate realty is beyond physical description. Value, Matter, Difference, Evolution, Intellect, and Consciousness are all relational aspects of being-aware. The closest approximation of a relational definition for Essence is Cusa's 'not-other' principle.
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/
