I guess I'll chime in, Ham, since I'm certainly one of "those" strange people.
> I strikes me as strange when people define the sense of otherness as a > "social" function. To me this is a Pirsigian concept intended to circumvent > subjects and objects. Surely most of our experience deals with otherness, > whether it's communication, manipulation, ingestion, exploration, > construction, or just plain thinking. When Descartes developed his Cogito, > he was incommunicado, isolated from every external perception and belief, > focusing only on pure thought. It was enough to convince him that he > existed, he was the knowing subject, and the existence of everything > else--the 'content' of experience--was in doubt. When Descartes was incommunicado, he was still thinking about something. "I think (about something) therefore I know that I (and something) AM. The wisdom of the East puts it differently, and better - it is delusion to the believe that the self arises and confirms the ten thousand things: enlightenment realizes that the ten thousand things arise and confirm the self. But even moreso, Ham, the only thinking Descartes did was in concepts provided by his culture - is the point Pirsig made. I was gonna stop there, but I can't resist: Ham: It is important to distinguish between "reality" and "existence", Mark. John: "Important", Ham? Of what import is the distinction between reality and existence? The only distinction I can think of is the self - a brief construct of little import to reality, and a great deal to existence! What's your frame of reference here? Ham: > What we create via experience are images or patterns of being that > represent the values on which we are focussed. John: But surely you realize that the entity which draws our focus, or focuses us, is the all important topic of the MoQ. In other words, it's not just an arbitrary momentary whim which determines our values - Ham: > In totality these patterns constitute "our reality" as existents, or simply > Existence. But what we experience as reality is relational, transitory, and > therefore illusory. > We have no direct knowledge of primary or ultimate Reality, nor any reason > to deduce that it is divided, evolutionary, or "created". > > John: I disagree. We have lots of reasons to interpret "reality" in lots of ways. That's what we do here, create reasonings and reasons for dividing experience in particular ways, testing those ways, weighing and examining - all in the light of a sort of faith that _fundamentally_, some ways of thinking are better than others. That this betterness is what is demonstrably fundamental to all experience or reality or whatever you want to use to reflect upon "the whole enchilada". But I think I'll wait to send this, and see what response you seduce from Mark. Hopefully something a bit more constructive than Adrie :-) John 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/md/archives.html
