Hi Bo --
Your responses are few and far between, so I tend to lose track of where we were.
On 9/22, you paraphrased my 'being-aware' epistemology as follows:
As I understand it your thesis is that there is a "cognizant" entity that formulates the axioms that separate ALL world views, thus this entity is the rock bottom of existence. Is this your point?
I then asked you what "separate all world views" means. [Bo]:
I just mean that - according to you - there is a cognizant something who thinks and as such is prior to any thought system.
YOU are the "cognizant something", Bo. The entity I described in my long-winded paragraph is the individual subject. Does it make sense to say that thinking is prior to a thought system? What is a "thought system", anyway? Is systemized thought how you understand Intellect?
When the smoke clears, what's left is "man the measure" sentence, adding "man's intellect" isn't significant. Is that about it?
Well, there's intelligent thought, conceptual thought, creative thought, and stupid thought, I suppose. Where you draw the "intellectual" line isn't particularly significant to me, as long as you acknowledge that it is the individual who does the thinking..
All right. I understand and agree, no use denying that mankind is the only species that think and that the most basic thought is the above. In ZAMM Phaedrus arrived at much the same conclusion, and according to him the Sophist's expressed it with "Man the measure of all things" sentence. Quality is the Essence and humankind is its arbiter or antenna.
Protagoras (5th C. BC) is credited as stating: "Man is the measure of all things." I believe this to be an astute observation of man's value-sensibility as it relates to the objective world. Considering that Pirsig equates Quality with Value, this statement seems to support his idea that "experience is the cutting edge of reality".
Wouldn't you agree? [Ham before]:
My cosmogeny posits Difference as the primary cause of experiential reality. Difference breaks the absolute source into two essential contingencies - sensibility and otherness.
[Bo]:
Right, Essence or Quality (Qualisence) as the primary cause is stale in the long run and Pirsig started on a MOQ in ZAMM that was completed in LILA in which Quality is split into DQ and SQ. Your split is essential sensibility and essential otherness. Do we have agreement this far?
Aside from the fact that Value (valuism) is more comprehensible derivative of Essence than Quality (qualityism), I have a problem with either term posited as the pimary source. I view Difference, not Quality or Value, as the "causative" factor of existence, and this may be a stumbling block in our discussion. Something has to become differentiated before existence can appear. Both quality and value are proprietary judgments (i.e., "measurements") of the individual. Logically and epistemically, no value is realized without a sensible subject, without a being aware of objects. Thus, the differentiation of Essence into subject/object is fundamental to value perception.
Pirsig starts with the "Quality experience" but fails to acknowledge a primary source. He has no Essence, Being, Creator, or Potentiality from which to derive experiential (SO) existence. The MoQ is a multi-level paradigm for the physical universe, not a metaphysical theory. Now you come along with a theory of Intellect that is supposed to fill in the gap between the physical and the psychic world. But intellect, like Quality and Value, is a human attribute, so SOL doesn't cut it as the ultimate reality.
This is where we disagree, Bo. Logic is an intellectual construction, but not even intellect can be prior to subjective awareness. Ex nihilo, nihil fit (nothing comes from nothingness). Don't be discouraged, though, because MoQists in general reject the concept of a supra-natural source on the grounds that it is tainted with "theism".
Now that you see what the Essence of Essentialism is, you can understand why our theories are moving in different directions than intended by MoQ's author. I sincerely hope that this difference will not prove a barrier in our discourse, but am not very optimistic.
Anyway, I appreciate your willingness to seriously consider my ontology, at least up to the fundamental definition of experiential existence as being-aware.
Thanks, and best wishes, 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/
