Hi Marsha and All --
> Greetings Ham,
>
> I care what you say. Everybody's input may offer insight, so I certainly
> do care what you say.
>
> Marsha
I appreciate your expression of solicitude, Marsha. Actually, yesterday’s
message got away from me as I tried to save it to my drafts file. Since my
wife is doing most of the e-mail messaging these days, I’ve not kept up with
the “technology”. But your response to the quotes I sent provides a platform
on which to make some points that came to mind when I reviewed them.
Let me first address Dan’s argument: “We do not experience Dynamic
Quality. 'It' IS experience.”
Obviously, Mr. Pirsig had a philosophical reason to divide Quality into two
forms or modes. The problem, as I’ve previously stated, is that the
descriptors “dynamic” and “static” are not consistent with what we experience
or intuit about reality.
The reality of experience is a “dynamic process” in which subjects and objects
come into existence, are transformed by interacting and/or aging, then
disappear from the world. We can only speculate as to what “Ultimate Reality”
is, but there is no evidence or logic by which to conclude it is “dynamic”.
If, as Pirsig implies, Quality (Value) is the true Reality, then this
differentiation of created time and space, subject and object, good and bad,
and a myriad of things in process is only an “experiential perspective” of
Value.
Note that Pirsig himself, as quoted by Dan, refers to experience as “change”
(process?), inferring that its Primary Source (DQ, Value?) is uncreated.
“...in the MOQ, there is no pre-existing subject or object. Experience and
Dynamic Quality become synonymous. Change is probably the first concept
emerging from this Dynamic experience.”
Now, I don’t expect the MoQers to reverse their position on static and dynamic;
yet if they did, it would afford them a more logical paradigm for the creation
of the value spectrum that constitutes experiential existence. And, though the
author doesn’t define his Source, it’s a reasonable assumption that his DQ
transcends the process and differentiation of created things—that it is, in
fact, eternal and immutable. Not that it has to be, but isn’t such a paradigm
more compatible with the ontologies of Plato, Buddha, even the theologians?
As you know from my book, I posit the Source as Essence, and define it as the
primary, unconditional Reality from which all experienced things are negated.
The creation process is “valuistic” in that the brain delineates “objective
otherness” from Value which is the essence of conscious (subjective)
sensibility.
But Essence is more than either Quality or Value, because these sensible
attributes are only “man’s measure” of things. Undifferentiated Sensibility
(including what we would call “intelligence”) is essential for the exquisite
cosmic order and balance which characterizes physical existence. Even modern
physicists have concluded that the DNA transformations responsible for the
evolution of living organisms could not have arisen from cause-and-effect
probability.
So, in conclusion, Dynamic Quality is NOT experience. Rather, it is the source
of Value from which experience is derived. You and I are finite existents
whose experience of the particular represents the Value of the Whole. Only
conscious sensibility above the level of differentiated space/time existence
can be One with Essence.
Again, thanks for the opportunity. I can only hope it adds some clarification
to the dialog previously quoted.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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