From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Oct 07 2005 - 07:42:15 BST
Reinier --
I got so carried away with your rocks that I failed to respond to the rest
of your 10/5 post which reveals some problems. So consider this Pt. 2 of my
last post.
I had said:
> If Value is an attribute of SQ not DQ, and is found
> in existence rather than in Essence, it requires "awareness",
> which as you say "is responsible for the subject/object
> division." You cannot have a subject/object division
> without a subject. Patterns or not, a rock is not a subject
> but an object.
You commented:
> For you it's an object, an other, like your body is an object,
> an other. That's because the 'you' that you identify as 'I' is
> your non-bodily self. To me that's an other, like your body
> but I have no direct means of experiencing 'you'.
> I can only experience everything that is also other to you.
> So 'you' value being in your body, so much even that in
> day to day events you very much identify with your body.
> And you experience other bodies, or rather, your body
> experiences other bodies through its senses.
> You identify so much that you'd say you experience them.
> All you really experience is the chemo in your brain.
I see no problem with that self/other (SOM) analysis.
> So what's experiencing? What's valueing? Stuff relating
> to other stuff... but there's no substantial stuff, because,
> you agreed, there is no substance. So basically there's
> no evidence that the rock is made up of different things
> than 'you' (your non-bodily self). But the rock
> has no senses and has no brain, that's obvious.
You're asking me what is "stuff"? And I'm answering, stuff is Essence. The
Hellenic philosophers used to call stuff "being" or "matter"; but quantum
physics has changed that, and now it's thought to be "energy stuff". If the
psychologists had their way, it would probably be called "mind stuff". But
the precise nature of this 'noumenon' isn't important to the philosopher.
What's important is that what WE are is not what this other (or our
experience of it) is.
To put it in your terms, "we" are NOT "stuff". The stuff is what's on the
outside of us, that is, outside our awareness (which is the inside). Prior
to our experience of the other, awareness is a blank slate -- a nothingness.
But as soon as we begin to experience we put two and two together and come
up with our differentiated reality. I cannot account for the pattern of
existence, but time and space are definitely part of it, and so is the
nothingness that separates everything from everything else. There is a
commonality between the nothingness that we are and the nothingness that
defines by differentiating experience. (I believe they are one and the
same.)
But, as you've observed, "something" accounts for the forms and properties
of things experienced. Otherwise, we would each be a solipsist living in a
totally subjective world. Although Pirsig doesn't say so, the metaphysics
he constructed from Quality and moralized upon in SMM is subjective. He was
saying, in effect, there's no "out there"; everything is experience ...
Experience =Reality. At least that's what he said in ZMM.
But LILA was written after Pirsig's SODV paper outlined a categorized
reality (a la Aristotle), and the tables were turned. Experience became
something of a hybrid, borrowing from Quality at an inorganic and a
biological level, as well as from a collective Intellect at the top level.
But since the author had not (at either stage) defined experience as
conscious awareness, this shifting of experience from the inside to the
outside seems to have gone unnoticed by all, except possibly for Bo. Since
his primary objective was to eliminate SOM, it didn't matter whether his
reality was inside or outside. There are two problems with the MoQ's
reality as I see it: 1) existence is two-sided, and 2) both sides presuppose
a primary source.
You apparently have a problem:
> I do not agree to your mind/matter dualism.
Forgetting the "mind/matter" description (since I don't refer to matter), do
you not believe that experience is subjective and that its content is
objective? Can you honestly say that your conscious self is nothing more
than the images that constitute your experience? If so, then how can you
justify this statement:
> The rock is an object because it's created as such by our intellect.
> 'I' experience the rock because 'I' is the intellectual construct of
> me. Hence the intellect creates, by conceptualizing reality, an S/O
> division.
If your 'I' is not the subjective self that observes (or "creates") the
objective other as "rock", how do you define the S/O division?
There's more to your message, but it mostly supports my concepts. For the
present, however, I fear that your rejection of existential (self/other)
duality may block the progress we've made thus far. (Hopefully, you will be
able to explain it away.)
Essentially (I trust) yours,
Ham
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