Hi David -- I tried to find the Pirsigian answer to the question you posed to me, which was: How do you define 'substance'?
The closest you get to defining substance is equivocating about it: > For us, the concept 'substance' seems too loaded with reductive > assumptions, and does not embrace our ontological pluralism. > Of course we also recognise something that unifies reality, that > all reality consists of qualities, and that qualities are always a > matter of significance, we do not just observe qualities, we are > always aware of qualities in a scheme of values, they always > lie on a value-spectrum between horror and subliminity, we do > not observe the world from some safe distance, we are are in > dynamic interaction trying to realise best potential we have. You say "'substance' seems too loaded with reductive assumptions, and does not embrace our ontological pluralism." You then proceed with a discussion of qualities and their relation to a "scheme of values". I'm left without a clear idea of what you believe substance is. Do you view it as 'patterns' of quality? Or do you not acknowledge it at all? Granted, we are all deeply immersed in a "substantive" world in which we bear witness to a "value-spectrum" that ranges from good to bad, joy to sorrow, "horror to subliminity[?]," etc. It's all metaphysically related to a higher order or holistic realm that transcends existence. But what is a substance? Is it a thing-in-itself? A thought or idea? An abstraction of Quality? A semiotic symbol? Let's use a simple rock, for example. Micah sent you a note about what we normally regard as a physical property of a substance: its temperature. [Micah, on 1/24]: > If I use tongs to take a rock out of a fire after being in the fire > for hours, is the rock hot? > No, the rock is a rock and does not have the ability to be hot, > it can't understand hot - it is a rock. Hot is what we are when > we touch the rock. It is a concept used to describe our > perceived quality of the rock. The hot concept is in us, > not the rock...the rock just is. The universe just is, it - like a > rock doesn't hold concepts like design - that quality, like all > human concepts resides in us, not without us. I think I was the only one to respond. I said I thought her epistemology could be considered a literal interpretation of Pirsig's principle that Experience is what creates the physical world. Would you agree? If not, how would you define substances and their physical properties? It would seem to me that we cannot dismiss an experienced phenomenon just because Robert Pirsig says "Quality is the empirical reality of the world." Scientists talk about the "real world". Mystics and philosophers talk about the "ideal world" as either things-in-themselves or symbolic representations of things. But we all experience existence as a self-sustaining system of differentiated components. Whence comes the design or scheme of this system? And if its components are not substances, what are they? Schemes, spectra, dynamic interactions, reductive assumptions, and ontological pluralisms are fine-sounding, sophisticated words, as you have used them. But let's get real! What do they mean in terms of our experienced reality? Essentially yours, 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
