From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Fri Sep 09 2005 - 01:55:45 BST
Hi Platt --
Behind that facade of polite naiveté is an urge to shoot holes in my theory.
That's all right, Platt; I'd probably do the same if it was yours. What I
said was:
> Everything you experience in the world is an "other"
> to yourself.
Your interrupted with:
> Do you mean "other to yourself" as "outside my body?" No.
> That can't be it because I experience a lot that goes on inside
> my body like heart palpitations and hunger, not to mention
> thoughts. Do you mean I can't get outside myself to
> see myself? True I can't see me as others see me, but
> I can see me like nobody else can in the sense that I alone
> feel my joy, pain, guilt, love, etc.
I include your body in the world you experience, and I treat man's
biological organism and all its neurological components as "otherness" in my
thesis. What is left is that which cannot be defined as an entity or event
in the physical world, namely, your awareness of a self with feelings. Your
last sentence says it all. Those emotions you have enumerated express what
I call "conditional" or relational values. They paint your portrait in the
hall of Essence. (How's that for an anology?)
> There's an old saying in the ad game about writing CIPU copy,
> pronounced KickPoo, meaning Clear If Previously Understood.
Point well taken. I've had similar communication problems with others no
doubt more intelligent that myself and have learned, but not sufficiently
practiced, the art of simplicity. Incidentally, I can get lost in MoQ talk,
quite often having to ask for a simpler explanation; so I don't know how
competent I am at understanding philosophy in general. I find that you
begin to acquire the authors' vocabulary after reading a few pages of a
thesis, and with it comes comprehension. Unfortunately, I don't have such
latitude in the MD. But I agree that a philosophy "should be presented so
as to be understood" by anyone with the intelligence to search for truth.
> Certainly Pirsig took pains to present his metaphysics that way. He never
> wrote anybody off as being "unsophisticated" (a most admirable trait
> IMO), not that I am accusing you of doing so...
Yes, despite the reservations I have concerning his thesis, I think Pirsig
is an excellent writer with admirable communications skills. But then, of
course, he was an English professor. I, on the other hand, lack academic
accreditation in either English or Philosophy -- and I never studied
Anthropology!
> My appeal to you is to translate phrases like "It introduces an
> anthropocentric perspective of reality based on the autonomy
> of man as the free agent and choicemaker in a deteministic universe"
> to something like, "In my philosophy, man is unique in having
> free will" or simply "Man is the measure" -- if that indeed is what
> you mean.
If you include the point that Essentialism is anthropocentric, that is
indeed what I mean. "Man is the measure" is a neat metaphor, but doesn't
quite do it for me.
> Have you the patience to take me by the hand and go with me little by
> little, step by step? I hope so.
If you have the patience, I have the time. Where do you want to start?
Let me say in closing that the single, most important concept I'm trying to
get across to all of you is that some form of Awareness is the basis of all
reality, including its essential source. To me, awareness encompasses
organic sensibility, a perspective of otherness, memory, and (in man)
self-consciousness, intellectual capacity, free will, and a psycho-emotional
response to the value of Essence.
Quality or Value may imply awareness, but it doesn't embody it. I think
Essence can and does. That's why I've called Essentialism not only a
"valuistic perspective" of reality but a "subjective approach" to
understanding it..
Thanks for your willingness and patience, Platt.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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