Hi Mark -- On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 2:09 AM, Mark "118" <[email protected]> wrote:
I do understand your concept of Essence. What I have always had trouble with (and I think you know this) is the principle of negation. Sure, God is everything, it has to be otherwise it is not God. No man with a big white beard for me, thank you very much (except at Xmas time of course). My question was intended to get more information about what you see. It was not a deep question that presented my inner psyche by any means. I am a biologist, but I do not believe in an evolving universe as it is currently presented. What becomes Qualityism if you want, is my personal relationship with the cosmos. It is not some words on a piece of paper. If I have shortocomings with my realtionship with reality, then it certainly does not come from what Pirsig writes. He is not that powerful, and certainly not my mentor. I wouldn't get too enamoured with something that Pythagora's is said to have said. Once you restrict yourself that way, you diminish your creativity. You will find, that our intellectual constructs actually do come from nothing. If not, where do they come from? Can you point to their origins? Can you state where it is that your sense of self comes from?
Actually I was wrong; it was Parmenides. But I do not see the principle that 'nothing comes from nothing' and the primary source is 'not-other' as "restrictive". On the contrary, these insights open the door of understanding to concepts still regarded as unfathomable or illogical. That they are not empirically verifiable is significant in itself, for if we had direct access to metaphysical truth, we would not be free to choose our convictions, such as the reality you are in the process of working out for yourself.
I don't understand how can you say intellectual constructs come from nothing. As cognitive creatures, we are all aware of what we experience and that we ourselves are the 'knowers'. So, right from the start, intellection and intuition are certainly not operating in a void. The very first intellectual conclusion we make is that what we experience is "real", that the things and persons we see around us are the physical objects of reality. As we mature, some of us come to doubt this conclusion, and this leads to speculative reasoning which can be insightful. Self-awareness, the "sense of self", is one of the principles we tend to question. Eastern mystics and pantheists, for example, believe the concept of selfness is an 'egoistic' impediment to cosmic understanding. Essentialists, on the other hand, hold to the view that the individuated self is the valuistic core of existential reality, and that attempts to nullify it diminish the meaning and purpose of the life-experience.
You can create words for such a thing, but that is not the same thing. Don't get too caught up in words, they are trivial in the end as Augustine said, "like straw". Where does Essence "come from", oh, I forgot, it just "is". Well, I guess it is your one allowed exception, but everything else must "come from" something? My bad.
I am only "caught up in words" to the extent that I need them to communicate my concepts. And if you don't think the MoQ is caught up in words, you'd be hard pressed to justify the endless debates going on here as to the meaning of "static and dynamic", "quality patterns", "evolution", "free will", "intellect", and "betterness". You scoff at the proposition that Essence "just is"; yet you apparently accept the proposition that Quality "just is". By what logic or natural law is an aesthetic property self-generating and independent of conscious realization? Do you really think Quality exists in the absence of man's relative sensibility and appreciation? Or is "Quality" just another name for the divinity Mr. Pirsig refuses to sanction?
A good mind is a terrible thing to waste. Essentially speaking, Ham 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
