From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Mon Jul 25 2005 - 18:51:21 BST
Hi Reinier, Platt and all interested --
Ham wrote to Platt:
> There must be at least four such "realistic views" then, since
Essentialism
> claims that "mentality and physicality" are two phenomena of a "monistic"
> Essence, not (as Panexperientialism puts it) "two aspects of a
phenomenon".
Reinier responds to me:
> This is how we couldn't get to agree about the hot-stove.
> I now see I came (and still come) from Panexperientialism.
> (Well on that point at least).
> Me starting with dualism probably threw you off balance...
> I learn a lot of philosophology on this forum so I recognize
> more and more of my own ideas in different existing theories.
> I still have to make a good case for my dualistic view of
> monistic essence. (And I will, still got some ideas up my sleeve).
As you will learn from the philosophologers, one of the biggest challenges
Philosophy has historically faced is: how to reduce Cartesian Duality to a
monism. (I've covered this in the introduction of my thesis.) Pirsig
thinks he's
achieved this by basing all things experienced on a common esthetic
attribute -- Quality.
I maintain that Quality by any common definition is a subjective judgment
that presupposes an observer (subject) and something observed or sensed
(object). If the object were removed (from sensibility or the memory of
it), or if there were no sensible subject, there would be no quality.
Hence, logic does not support the concept of a "collective" or universal
quality as the primary source. In other words, no pain exists from sitting
on a hot stove in the absence of either the stove or the sitter. No
knowledge of reality -- physical or otherwise -- exists without a cognizant
experencing subject. There's your "duality", Reinier.
Now, on the "source" side of this issue, you, Platt, a Panexperientialist
named Charles Birch, and the whole MoQ community are willing to treat it as
"phenomenal", giving physical reality priority status. I see this as
covering one delusion with another. If there is no ultimate reality, how
can there be be an illusory reality?
I have posited Essence as Ultimate Reality. Essence is not Being nor an
existential attribute of a differentiated subject or object. It is the
fundamental nature of all phenomena, including thoughts, feelings, and
experiences. It is the "not-other" from which all otherness is derived.
There are no attributes accessible to the finite mind that we can assign to
Essence, except for its absolute Oneness.
It's clear to me that this concept is untenable to the MoQ loyalists who
feel that by parsing all experienced phenomena into patterns, levels, and
latching points of Quality they've solved the riddle. What they've actually
done is constructed a "semiotic" reality with no more meaning or insight
than the dualism professed by Descartes, and far less substance.
So, roll up your sleeves, Reinier and give it your best. Hopefully, what
you come up with will be have a more logical foundation than the esthetic
semiosis proposed by the MoQ.
Best regards,
Ham
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