Hello Ham 2 Oct. Bo before:
> > Protagoras and his fellow Sophists was part of the New Age > > (intellect or SOM) that had been brewing long before Socrates, > > Plato & Co. thus that of Man (to become "mind" or "subject") > > as everything's source (in contrast to the old myth age where > > such an approach was unknown) was already established. > > And from THOSE premises humankind is the "cutting edge". > > I refrain from the Quality terminology at this stage.* Ham: > This scenario is somewhat difficult to follow in a two-sentence > exposition. If you're saying that humans realized their intellectual > capability before Socrates, there can be no dispute about that "Realized their intellectual capacity" is a bit odd, hope things will be sorted out by my below. . > However, I don't think Plato's idealism was founded on the idea that > man "becomes 'mind'"; rather, it was that "things are ideas > (essences)" perceived by man. What emerged was the notion of existence as divided into one illusory component and one permanent ditto. With Plato it was "appearance/ideas", with Aristotle "form/substance". It really started much earlier with the search for eternal principles, but I can't repeat it all. At least Pirsig's idea is that's this initial split has grown through many phases to end up as a conviction that existence is split this way - from eternity till eternity (AKA SOM even the terms subject and object is more recent) the main thing is that such a split arrived with in Greece in the last millennium BC. (in the Western world, but that's another discussion) As said the phases have varied. Plato's sounds as if ideas are the permanent part (objective) while it with Aristotle had turned 180 degrees and "substance" is the real thing: This is closer to present day mind/matter variety where mind is subjective and the physical world objective, hence Pirsig's remark in ZAMM "...with Aristotle the modern scientific attitude is born". > I don't accept Quality as primary, so a split from "dynamic" into > "static" isn't meaningful. Never mind Quality at this stage. > To me the fundamental split (i.e., primary division) is between the > absolute whole (Essence) and the experience of finitude > (differentiated beingness). Right, but the "Essence/Experience of finitude" division required a previous stage where DIVISION into a permanent and an illusory part came to be, namely the differentiated beingness that (according to Pirsig) arrived with the Greeks as SOM. Your Essence metaphysics is an exact match to the first Quality metaphysics in ZAMM: Essence or Quality spawnings the differentiated (subject/object) beingness. > Yes, existence IS by definition. It's a given that being is. It's > what we're aware of and what our universe is made of. This sounds obvious, but Western acadmical philosophy knows no Existence or Reality prior to "differentiated beingness" (S/O) It postulates a subjective existence and an objective existence, full stop! And - again - this arrived with the Greeks. And again, only from this division platform could a more fundamental division be worked out, meaning that the MOQ could only grow out of SOM as could your Essentialism. Your mistake is to think that humankind before the Greeks would have realized this had they just been as great thinkers as ourselves. > But space/time existence is not ultimate reality, it is only the > appearance (to a subject) of that reality. Essence transcends > finitude. And, because it is not an existent, technically, Essence > cannot be said to exist. That is my understanding, Bo. Yes, Essence transcends finitude (differentiated beingness) in the same way as Quality transcends SOM - or is its source as Pirsig's first proto moq had it. In the final MOQ however "differentiated beingness" is its intellectual level ... at least as I see it. > I appreciate the difficulty and your willingness to bear with me on > the fundamentals. Do you now begin to understand the ontology I'm > proposing? If you would be so kind as to expand a bit on your > statement (asterisked above), I might begin to comprehend yours. I understand you perfectly, but you seem unwilling to understand me, till now at least, perhaps this will be the turning point? > Thanks for your patience, Bo. Likewise, this is a metaphysical discussion and in that respect you are true to its clauses. Bo 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/
