Hi Joe --
[Ham, previously to Mark]:
The human body and its neuro-sensory system are the biological
"instrument" of sensibility. But the Value of which it is sensible
comes from the prime essence. This is what Science, with all its
investigative resources, is unable to discover. It's not something
you can research and confirm from empirical evidence.
[Joe]:
Carbon! It is found in coal, and in a sentient being. The simplest
explanation is that it exists differently in the two instances and has
different qualities. It is not derived from a "prime essence" of carbon.
Indeed, "prime essence" is a contradiction when speaking of an
individual since individuality is a logical contradiction to primacy.
Where there is one, prime, two logically follows. Two carbons
exist differently and the contradiction disappears.
UREKA! You have found it?
Carbon is the building block of organic chemistry, so it has been called
"the element of life". Actually, water (hydrogen and oxygen) are more
essential to life than carbon. But, like all elements in the periodic
table, carbon has a specific atomic weight which distinguishes it as an
element. Isn't this individuality as much a "logical contradiction to
primacy" as is the human individual? Yet carbon and its molecular forms
(including organic) must be derived from an "uncreated" soruce.
Your rule that "two logically follows from one" is a mathematical principle,
not a metaphysical concept. Mark had suggested that Quality could be
replaced by a number of words, including "prime source". But the "primary
source" has nothing to do with "prime numbers"; it connotes the essence that
is primary to numbers, difference, and relations. Everything that exists is
separate and "individuated" from everything else. Does this "contradiction
to primacy" invalidate an essential source? Logically not.
The fallacy in basing ontology on a substantive element like carbon is that
an element is a "thing", and things are experiential constructs of value.
Pirsig based his ontology on Quality which is not a physical thing but
requires a sensible agent to realize it. So neither carbon nor quality can
be the fundamental reality, even though both are derived from a primary
source. When you deny the fundamental source, you deny existence as a
causal possibility. You can't have a created world without an uncreated
source. Ex nihilo nihil fit -- nothing comes from nothingness.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
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