From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Mon May 02 2005 - 06:25:04 BST
Ian --
> Ham, rising to Platt's challenge, I will not avoid your question any
longer ...
>
> I'd say I was more B than A, but like Scott, I don't see them as
> mutually exclusive.
As I see it, you're all trying to define your personal metaphysical
perspective in terms of the MoQ which is ambiguous on the issue of ultimate
reality. The very use of Quality as the primary reality makes the ontology
ambiguous. Quality, like Goodness, Beauty and Truth, is a valuistic
judgment of something experienced; any attempt to rationalize it as non-SOM
is based on the premise that Quality exists independently of conscious
sensibility. It is that premise by which Mr. Pirsig has purportedly
eliminated Cartesian dualism. One may accept the concept of a universal
Quality on "faith", but it doesn't pass muster as a credible thesis.
> The problem with B for me is the word "exists" in the first sentence -
> ontologically I don't believe B, epistemologically I do. For me
> consciousness is part of the real "physical" world, but I do firmly
> believe all we can ever know about the real world and its ontology is
> that which is perceived through consciousness.
Here I would ask: what part of the "physical" world is not contained in
consciousness? I don't mean to imply that the physical world is all there
is; but since it is all we can know (empirically) about reality, physical
reality is identical with experiential reality. You say "consciousness is
part of the physical world". I say, that's true only if the consciousness
you speak of is proprietary to you, me, or someone else. You also say:
> I don't believe consciousness is restricted to our human
> minds, or even minds in general, and in keeping with MoQ and Zen, I
> believe there are ways for consciousness to alter its own "levels",
> although clearly to perceive, know, think, imagine, hallucinate
> anything, we need non-zero consciousness.
I don't know the meaning of "non-zero consciousness", but the notion of
"minds in general" or free-floating, non-proprietary consciousness with no
referent subject is
insupportable by logic or metaphysics.
What I'm getting at is, simply, that these two perspectives of reality
indeed are mutually exclusive. Statement A, that "matter, nature, the
observable
world is taken 'without reservations' as real in its own right, neither
deriving its reality from any supernatural or transcendental source, nor
dependent for its existence on the mind of man" is a clear argument for the
primacy of matter. Conversely, Statement B, that "consciousness and its
contents are all that exists. ...The world of our daily experience ... is a
species-specific
user interface to a realm ... whose essential character is conscious",
argues unambiguously for the primacy of conscious awareness.
The fact that awareness is proprietary to the individual, whereas experience
always alludes to a non-proprietary object, confirms the duality of
existence. The only way to overcome this dichotomy is to acknowledge a
primary source that transcends existence.
> Like Hoffman I see that "there is as YET no physical theory of
> consciousness" but as Hoffman says it's only a matter of time (and
> yes, like everything else the answer will be yet another metaphor -
> "42" perhaps - with an explanation that no-one believes or understands
> for 30 to 100 years - situation normal.)
Hoffman seems to have closed the door to a scientific theory of
consciousness -- at least in this quotation. And I tend to agree. For the
scientist reality is the otherness 'out there'. But the answers are not to
be found 'out there', because reality is the primary Essence which
transcends both self and other.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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