Bo --
Dear Ham, the last man standing!
What! Have all the rest of you turned into phantoms?
[Ham, previously]:
Experience IS "interpreting reality".
[Bo]:
Agree. No one living in an ordered universe can avoid
interpreting reality (i.e. "having a metaphysics")
The MOQ does not reject "the self-evident objective we live
in as anything [but] cognizant subjects". This is the highest
static level.
[Ham]:
In order to accept the premise of a unified Dynamic Quality,
we have to hypothesize that our "real world" does not exist.
[Bo]:
I have come to doubt Pirsig's interpretation of his own insight
which was that reality isn't anything at all before an ordering of it.
Thus the true MOQ is the "Dynamic not anything/Static something"
While Pirsig speaks about a Dynamic not anything/Static MOQ.
"Reality isn't anything at all before an ordering of it." (?)
My dear Bo, that defies even metaphysical logic and doesn't dignify your
intellect.
I know you are familiar with the 'ex nihilo' principle. What am I to make
of this cosmology? Surely you're not suggesting that Nothing contains a
"something" that gives rise to an "order".
[Ham]:
Not even the MoQ can do this without positing levels of
quality, the divisions of which cannot logically be attributed
to an undivided source.
[Bo]:
I'm not sure what you say here, but your objection is that
the above said "ordering of the dynamic not anything"
must be done by a cognizant subject. Right? ...
I'm saying simply that Nothingness has no order and no agent to do the
ordering.
So, if your DQ is really nothing, where does the "ordering" -- the divisons
or levels -- come from?
And - again - this is self-evident at the subject/object level,
but as I try to show we know that it hasn't always been
self-evident.
People of old (social level in the MOQ) did not speak
about any subject self. You scoff at the level system,
but I think it's the stroke of genius.
Please don't get historical on me again! What "people of old" knew or said
is irrelevant to the fundamental reality we're discussing. It doesn't take
a stroke of genius to realize that we exist in a differentiated world, and
it's something short of genius to divide existence into four levels when it
is evident that the division is binary, i.e. between Self and Other,
Awareness and Beingness.
What you REALLY (want to) say is: "...don't you see that all this is
the language and only man has language"? and the language
issue we have exhausted.
No, this is not what I want to say. The issue isn't "language" at all; it's
the concept of reality itself. There can be no divisions, levels, or agent
to order existence if the fundamental reality is Nothing. Come now,
Bo...what logic supports such a thesis?
[Ham]:
Why do you insist that only inorganic phenomena are interactive?
Don't biological life forms interact? Aren't emotions a product
of the observer's interaction with experienced events? Don't we
associate numbers or facts intellectually when reasoning?
[Bo]:
Just a moment, inorganic patterns interact (by 4 known forces)
and as the levels builds on top of each other they have in turn
raised the basic inorganic interaction to ever greater heights.
Biological interaction, social interaction intellectual ... if you must.
"Known forces" are gravity, energy, power, pressure, inertia, momentum,
elasticity, and electro-motive. Inorganic, Biological, Social, and
Intellectual are not "forces". They are one author's arbitrary
classification of natural (experiential) process. But, again, nothing can
come from nothingness. There can be no force, pattern, or process in the
absence of a fundamental source.
That fundamental source is what I call Essence. You may call it Dynamic
Quality or Intellect, but it must possess the potentiality for at least the
appearance of things if it is to account for the emergence of a
differentiated universe.
The species called Homo Sapiens transcended the biological
level because its social sense (that exist among higher animals)
"took off on a purpose of its own" and started to dominate biology
instead of being "in its service". Thus the social level is a "human
level, but these humans had no feeling of being the source of
emotions. Ham, pick up Homer's ILIAD and read the opening
lines: "The Rage of Achilles ....what god drove them to fight with
such a fury?". Everything at the social was god-given, the
individual a helpless instrument of the divine play.
I view man's role in existence quite differently. Rather than "a helpless
instrument of the divine play," he is the free and autonomous agent of
Essential Value.
But, as my mother used to say, "to each his own".
Best regards,
Ham
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