Jean --
Excellent. And that helps. A bit. But, by saying that
existence is being-aware, are you saying that existence
is all of those things (illusionary, material, etc ...or none
of them, or only some? Or does your statement have
any direct bearing on that debate at all?
Either you are misreading me or ignoring my explanations, since you are
drawing conclusions that I never made. Please understand that I am not
interpreting Pirsig's MoQ in this discussion. Unless the pseudonyms by
which you identify yourself are avatars of some other participant, I assume
you are new to this forum. If you're looking for an explanation of Pirsig's
Quality hierarchy, you should not be talking to me. "Being-aware" is my own
term for what experiential existence is.
In "Ham's assorted quotes" you picked up my response to Craig, who had asked
(rhetorically): "So everything that exists is aware (rocks, plants, the
color green, democracy, etc." My answer was . . .
"Everything that exists is aware to the SUBJECT who experiences it."
[Jean]:
There is a little ambiguity in the "it" of the last quote,
so I am going to assume that you mean "the awareness."
No. "It" refers to "everything that exists". The meaning of my statement
is that everything that exists is aware to the subject. (That should clear
up the ambiguity.)
I find that providing descriptions and examples of a
concept makes it wholly more comprehensible, and more
visual, enabling the reader to see the importance of the
assertion. Often, too, by getting too fundamental (such as
trying to determine when exactly a fetus attains human
status and rights) we lose sight of the multitude of other
factors that influence whether, for example, abortion is a
woman's right. That was my point ...
Whoa! Abortion is a MORAL issue that has nothing to do with ontology or
metaphysics. There is no way you can extend a definition for existence into
an argument for moral behavior. If morality is you're concern, join another
thread here or start one of your own.
But perhaps that is not what you were trying to convey.
Now to go back to your uh... cosmology? Eh, I shouldn't
use words I don't know the definition of.
You really shouldn't. For your edification, Cosmology is that branch of
metaphysics which deals with the physical universe and its relations.
Ontology is a theory of the substantive nature, essence, or "beingness" of
physical reality.
[Craig]
{Ham, reconstructed}
1) we know that being exists only because we are aware of it
2) whatever knows that being exists only because it is aware
of it, is fundamentally a being-aware.
3) therefore each cognizant individual is fundamentally a
being-aware.
You have provided no support for 2)
[Jean]:
Well, it seems I cannot find your response to this... meh.
So I'm going to try to rephrase this in words that make
more sense to me.
Again, that's asking for trouble. Here is how I answered Craig:
I submit that it is self-evident that "awareness" is proprietary
to the "knower" and that all knowers are cognizant "beings".
Hence, being-aware is a self-evident principle.
[Jean]:
We constantly must interpret what people say. That doesn't
mean that by asking for clarification we're necessarily using
crutches though; there is always a simpler way to say something.
One of my teachers once said, "if you can't explain something
as so a third grader could understand it, you don't fully
understand it," and the rest of my teachers are constantly
instructing us to write essays as if we were describing it
to one of our clueless relatives or friends.
That teacher gave you wise advice. And that's really my point in keeping
explanations as close as possible to fundamental definitions. I want to
avoid having my concepts misconstrued by "clueless" third graders or MoQists
behaving like them. The less struggle required for interpreting the
author's meanings, the greater the readers' understanding.
Back to the topic, here is my rewording:
1) we know that being exists only because we are
aware of it
2) knowing that we exist only because we are aware
of it proves that we are both aware and a being
Which essentially, is something you either believe or don't.
Except, I get the feeling that you're trying to argue that
you can't *not* believe it.
After all, what is the alternate explanation? Is there
another way to "become" without awareness?
It seems you say no.
Right. We cannot be aware without "becoming". We cannot become without
being aware. As I said previously, being and awareness are mutually
dependent contingencies of existence. They are the individuated derivatives
of the Sensibility/Otherness dichotomy from which all difference is derived.
If you say that a rock, according to you or me, is not
a being-aware, yet nonetheless exists, you open up
all kinds of doors, while contradicting yourself.
What kinds of doors does it open, and how am I contraditing myself.
But if you say that a rock *is* a being-aware, even
from my perspective, I must ask, as mildly as possible,
how it manages such a feat without having a single
organic component, and how come I am not
implicitly aware of its awareness?
The stone doesn't "manage a feat". It simply exists as part of our
construction of experiential reality. It's existence is "necessitated" by
man's intellectualizion of value.
But that's an epistemological topic for another discussion. For the
present, I ask only for your acceptance or rejection of the definition
"being-aware" to express existential reality.
Genuinely (though I have no relation to the Lord-person)
I don't know what this signifies, and could care less.
Thanks Jean,
Ham
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