On Monday, June 28, 2010 3:45 PM, John Carl wrote:
Well, Ham, if your continued participation hangs in the balance,
the pressure is ON.
I doubt if my responses to your tenets will be helpful,
but it might be fun anyway.
FUNDAMENTAL TENETS OF ESSENTIALISM:
1) Nothing comes from nothingness.
Demonstrably, there's no such thing as nothing.
2) Nothing creates itself (i.e., brings itself into existence)..
See above.
3) Existence is the appearance of differentiated otherness.
What about the aspects of existence that have no recognizable
appearance? If you say that without appearance there is no existence,
I'm gonna send you back to the empiricism from whence you came.
I presume you mean "aspects" such as quality, dynamics, relations, order,
design, beauty, morality, desirability, importance, and sensory
attributions. These are all psycho-emotional affects of value-sensibility
projected by the self into otherness.
4) All appearance--including divisions, relations, and movement--
is the affect of an uncreated source.
Appearance is subjective.
In a word, yes. Appearance is what we're aware of, which is subjective.
However, neither the appearance nor the subjective awareness of it exists
independently of a primary source.
5) The primary difference is the provisional separation of
proprietary sensibility from the undivided source.
Provisional upon what? More subjectivism.
Time, space, finitude, dependence, life/death, being/nothing, contrariety,
uncertainty.
6) Life is an individual experience the essence of which is
value-sensibility.
Life is certainly bigger than any individual's experience.
This is a major "duh".
Life is not quantifiable in terms of vastness or size. All or ANY life is
an individual experience. Existence for any individual is his/her
life-experience.
7) Cognizant awareness, feeling, knowledge, interpretation,
intellection, and realization are proprietary to the individual.
Disagree completely. All those things are relative and arise only in
intersubjective comparison.
"Relative", yes, since all awareness is dependent on otherness.
"Intersubjective", no.
(Possibly you meant to say "interrelational.")
8) Experience is the objective representation of value realized.
See above.
9) Unrealized value does not exist.
Hey! I think I agree with this one.
10) Man is a "free agent" in that he has the innate capacity
to act in accordance with his proprietary value orientation.
And this one. We're on a roll now. Except for that troublesome part
about
value being proprietary.
11) All truth is relative. Access to "absolute truth" is
inimical to individual freedom.
Truth is an idealized absolute. An individual's apprehension of truth
is relative.
Essentially, isn't that what I'm saying?
12) Wisdom is not factual knowledge but the ability
to realize the value of experience.
Ok, I'll go along with that one, just to end on a happy and logically
positive note.
Ya logical positivist you.
You really think so? I doubt that a logical positivist would agree with
more than one or two of these tenets. (I'm about to test that by showing
them to a retired science professor whom I've known since high school. I'll
let you know how he responds.)
A possible 11 out of 12 (discounting required clarifications) is a very
positive essentialist position, John. I don't expect to elicit anything
close to that from the ranking Pirsigians here. I'm pleased, of course,
although not really surprised, based upon your posts over the past year.
I do appreciate your response, John. We need to have more discussions.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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