Hi Ham, LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question…. Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
-T.S. Eliot. I was going to start my ontology with that, but I got bogged down (in the details). Not as easy as it seems is it? I am not being lazy here, it's just that everytime I write a sentence I disapear into some kind of daydream and then try to figure out how I am going to put it to words. It is coming, perhaps we can start with a rough draft, and I will touch it up to close the gaping holes that your questions bring in. (There, my daydreaming took over again. Is that age?) Let me adress your present post below: On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 11:32 PM, Ham Priday <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mark, and a Happy New Year to All -- > > On Friday, 12/23/2011 at 1:17 AM, Mark "118" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Ham, >> I am attempting as best I can to not make Marsha feel put upon. >> You know my opinion, so I can understand why you are confused. >> >> Two things that inherently exist? How about a dog and a sunflower. >> I can provide more if you want, for example you exist inherently, >> believe it or not. There is nothing conventional about these things, >> they are all uniquely unconventional. Show me something >> conventional and I will show you a mistake. I have been where >> you are and back. Trust me. > > > Marsha has misconstrued Buddhism as a philosophy founded on nihilism, and > this does an injustice to Pirsig's Quality thesis. I had hoped to see the > promised outline of your ontology over the holidays, which is why this > response is delayed. I think that Marsha knows what Emptiness is, and it is not nihilistic, just a bit deterministic (perhaps that is Nihilism, I don't know). Quality is not Nihilistic, just the word can tell you that. > > The statement you made (to Joe Maurer) raises the question of whether > "things" inherently exist. Your clarification above would appear to exlude > living organisms (i.e., dogs, sunflowers and people) as "conventional > things". If by "conventional" you mean "objectively recognized", I would > argue that all experienced physical entities are conventional. However, > since your examples may be regarded as "subjective" in some sense, perhaps > you feel they don't qualify as conventional objects. Yet, I'm sure you agree > that the body of a dog or human exists, as does a flowering plant. Why you > insist that these entities do not exist "conventionally" eludes me. Don't get me wrong, I did not mean to separate the living from the non-living. I could have just as easily said dog and its excrement. I did not mean to mislead you. They were the first things that popped into my head as objects. Gee, I can't remember what I said to Joe, I do believe that things inherently exist, it is nonsense to think otherwise. I think the conventional truth came from Marsha. But, for the sake of somehow relating this to MoQ, let us say that conventional existence is static quality which has been filed in our heads for retrieval. It is an existence that we format in a way that we can share our experience with others. If there were no others, the concept of a dog would not exist in our heads. It would be part of an everchanging immediate reality. But, with the advent of others (thank God) we must reflect on what we are, what we see, and what our minds are doing so that we can talk about it endlessly on internet forums (fun!). So, we can call that conventional since we use it conventionally at a convention of minds. I explain my comment on inherent existence as follows: You must admit that our conventional symbolic representation of something is not the thing itself. If you do, then you can gather why I state that these things do not exist conventionally "as is". If I understand Essentialism, the claim would be that we create these objects though a process of Valuation. My ontology will also contain the concept of valuation as you use it, for it is Quality. To preempt myself, I would state that valuation creates us, not the other way around, but more on that in my opus Qualititus of about 4 paragraphs, later. > Existence is a conventional system in that everything appearing in it is > accepted as "real" by convention. Whether existence is an "inherent" > property or attribute of the object itself is another question which you > haven't addressed. Is life an inherent property of the biological organism? > Apparently not, for the carcass of a dead dog or man remains in the > conventional world for some time before decomposing, and the plucked flowers > you present to your wife or friend are no longer self-sustaining (live) > plants. Yes, there is agreement for reality, in most cases. Elsewise we would be stuck in some murky world of Relativity. Like: "what's your reality of the day, are you coming or going?", kind of thing. So, I can accept this definition of conventional. Is existence inherent? Hmmm... What the Buddhist would say is: NO! They would treat everything like a rainbow. A rainbow does not exist inherently because it requires causes. Therefore, there is nothing one could point to as the actual essence of a rainbow, or anything for that matter. A waterfall would be another example. Again, I do not see this as Nihilistic, but more a shirking of responsibility, if this was the sum total of Buddhism. This is what Marsha does not understand. Buddhists are very responsible for Self. Therefore it does exist. When you speak of attributes, you are again talking my ontology. What we discern as reality are attributes or qualities. It is the interface between us and something else that IS what we call reality. For an interface to exist, two things must meet. However, to scramble this up for you (with the currently fashionable meida leaks of my ontology), I will also point out that it is Quality which Creates that interface and gives the impression of two things meeting. (Hey maybe if I leave my ontology somewhat obscure like this, you will have nothing to question...). In this way, Quality is the source of all. It is the source of real inherent things, nonetheless. Kind of like the particle and anti-particle somehow appearing out of nowhere. Since I am babbling on about something I have not completed yet but is on my mind, I will use an analogy for Quality. I am sure you are aware of the ECG traces left which depict a heart beat. You know, the deflections from the flat line. Assume that nothingness is a completely flat line. That is, reality would have no dimensions. Suddenly the heart beat comes in and creates deflections, and voila, we are in existence. Then the stimulus goes away and back we are to the flat line. What creates that deflection? Well my friend, that would be Quality. Why do I call it Quality? Because it creates all the qualities that we sense, which is all we sense. On Life (this is really a nonsequetor coming from you question about life). As we define it, life is an inherent part of the biological process. This is simply a definition, which does not confer much knowledge. However, for life to exist as such, there must be a constant stream of electrical potential drops. In humans this is done by taking electrons from food and giving them to Oxygen in a very round about way. It is that stream of electrical energy that is the life-force. If this is stopped (the power is interupted as in a circuit), the material life stops. So, that is life in the physical world as seem from a bioenergetic point of view. Now, you may be referring to the spiritual world. That is, "Why are we not just meat robots without a sense of self"? In this case I would say that the essence of ourselves is non material which is found in a material body. Many, but not all, of our directives arise from biology (which is a process of "self-assembly"). So life has its physical and non-physical, and both are required. > > I'd be interested to know why you believe living entitites are "uniquely > unconventional" as opposed to non-living objects, and how you defend the > proposition that life (or subjectivity) is inherent to the particular > organism rather than to its biological nature. Hopefully this information > will be included in the forthcoming outline of your philosophy. Yeah, pressure, pressure, that's all I get from you... I will approach this in the most unconventional manner possible. By the way, it is not my philosophy, it was given me in a dark cave in the mountains... > Best regards, Mark > > _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ > > > 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 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
