Hi Mark --
Thanks for your responses to my post.
My pleasure.
We may be discussing the difference between a personal
reality and a Reality. Yes, experience can be the cutting edge
of our personal reality, but it is in response to Reality, or
Quality if you wish. If this is accepted, then the question
becomes is Quality a consistent (anthropomorphic)
interpretation of Reality. (As you know, Reality is described
in many ways, by many words, perhaps all right). If Reality
is expressed in the form of Quality, then our responses to
this Reality shapes our experiences. Our experiences do not
create Reality. You state that our experience is relational.
Let me then ask, relational to what? What forms our experience?
It seems to my that you are using Essential Value in exactly the
same way as others use Quality, which brings it outside
personal experience.
I thought I had covered the ontogeny in my online thesis, but perhaps it was
inadequate. We can only "respond to" Value, the ground of existential
reality. No being or entity can "co-exist' with the Absolute. (That's why
the subjective self must be negated from Essence in order to exist.) The
(essential) nature of the individuated self is sensibility to Value. It is
this primary sensibility from which the dimensional order and substantive
being of the universe are experientially derived. So,
while Reality creates selfness (as a negated other), it does not "shape"
subjective experience. Actually, the epistemology is the other way around:
Experience shapes our reality from Value by making it relational. What we
call existence is a differentiated, relational system fabricated by our
experience and defined by our intellect. Existence is an objective
representation of our subjective value-sensibility. Again, I must repeat
the point I've made so often in this forum. Unrealized Value is a logical
absurdity. Whether you call it Quality or Value, it doesn't exist until it
is realized. Our valuistic existence is ALL relative, which is how we are
free agents of Value.
I thought I understood your negation of essence to denote consciousness.
I still think that is what you are saying. For this reason, my trouble
with it
has been the purely human connotation of this. Consciousness is expressed
by all, in the same way. The neurological patterns in our brains is no
different from a river tributary. But now I am getting into the esoteric
which doesn't seem to be well received in MoQ.
The negation of Essence actualizes Difference, the primary contingencies of
which are proprietary Sensibility (the knowing 'I') and its appearance of
otherness. Consciousness is the aggregated "content" of awareness at any
given time. I think it is a mistake to call consciousness an "expression",
just as it's a mistake to equate proprietary awareness with one's behavior.
What I think you mean is that "we all experience reality" in the same way,
which is to say that there is general consensus as to the order and dynamics
of objective reality. But that's the working principle of empirical
knowledge. It does not mean that my proprietary experience is the same as
yours, that I respond to Value as you do, or that my conscious perception of
the world matches yours. In fact, I'm convinced that value-sensibility is
unique to each of us, that no two individuals share an identical reality.
I don't know what you mean by "getting esoteric." But it's obvious that my
concept of value antagonizes the MoQers for whom 'the Quality of Reality is
strained' as a universal principle. They fail to understand that there is
no such thing as "unrealized value", and they reject Protagoras' maxim that
"Man is the measure of all things." They also seem to think that Quality
evolves ever toward "betterness", thus demonstrating that their ontology is
limited to a dimensional universe. Any mention of transcendence or a
primary source evokes accusations of "theism" or "mythology", so it appears
I stand guilty of apostasy in Qualityland.
Thanks for the questions, Mark. I hope this resolves some of your problems.
Essentially yours,
Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Dear Mark, Gav and Marsha --
Mark says:
I can correlate "responses to Quality" to say that what Ham
terms: "reality of experience [being] relational", is in fact
"responses to Quality". From ZAMM, I do not believe
that a premise of absoluteness contradicts what Pirsig has
written, so I am unclear what Ham is referring to.
Ham is referring to Pirsig's postulate that Quality equals Reality. This is
inconsistent with his pronouncement that "experience is the cutting edge of
reality." If Quality is fixed as a constant of the universe, it canot be
modified or actualized by experience, for experience is relative to the
subject 'I'. In short, experience serves no purpose in Pirsig's cosmology.
I believe that Ham's premise is that there is no reality outside
our own, which does indeed have relativistic tones. To say this
would imply that when we die, the world dies. In my opinion,
experience is but a part of existence. There is a reality outside
of experience, there has to be else wise we are just negating
nothingness in a vacuum.
I am NOT saying that there is no reality outside of our own. I am saying
that "existence" is our own reality, and that it's experiential and
relational. Ultimate Reality transcends existence, and is absolute and
unconditional. What happens when we die is another question beyond the
scope of the present discussion.
This may be assumed to be so, but then what is regulating how we
create our reality? Who is making that decision? What we experience
is our brain in a constant dance with that outside. So are we the brain,
or are we the dance? If we are the dance, where does the
music come from?
There is no "regulation". WE (as free subjects) are the creators of our
experiential reality. We make the decisions and "dance the dance". We
dance to Essential Value, the music played by an orchestra we cannot see,
hear or experience. We set the rythym for this dance according to our
measure of its Value to us.
Now, I would also add that Quality denies empirical Truths such as
Ham proposes. Indeed if "truth is relative", then even that statement
is relative in itself. This notion would deny any kind of scaffolding to
anything and would result in some kind of existential meaninglessness.
Worse yet, it would also relegate all opinions to meaningless statements.
I believe we are beyond that point. There is a context to our realities.
Quality (Value) neither denies nor affirms. WE are the active agents of our
reality. It is we ourselves who affirm its value by objectivizing our
being-in-existence to represent it. The meaning of existence is implied by
Mark's assertion: "There is a reality outside of experience, there HAS TO
BE." No one can deny this, nor can anyone prove it as Truth. That is what
sets us free to measure this reality in our own valuistic terms. What we
are measuring and definining is relational Value, the ground of our
existential reality. Relative values, such as Quality and Morality, are
defined experientially by man. What philosophers strive to achieve is a
hypothesis (metaphysics) that explains the Ultimate Reality beyond
experience and man's relation to it.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
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