From: Ham Priday (hampday@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Dec 07 2005 - 06:01:51 GMT
Greetings, Platt --
I hope you won't mind my using you as a "guinea pig" for what is actually
a test message. I've just switched to Verizon's broadband service and am
not sure that my new address will work with Horse's new mail delivery system
which just happens to coincide with this change.
Since I have your attention, I may as well take the opportunity to commend
you on your persistence in championing the individual in true 'Randian'
fashion. Your 12/6 post to Arlo, however, has me a bit puzzled. You
said:
> I don't think either you or I or any human being was there at the
> beginning. But consciousness was. Does that clarify my position?
Whose consciousness was "at the beginning"? I wonder if you are taking
the position of Donald Hoffman who asserted that "consciousness and its
contents are all that exists". If so, you would be identifying
consciousness as Prisig's 4th level, thus denying its proprietary identity.
Doesn't this contradict your argument on behalf of individualism?
You reply to Arlo's question about separate individuals "emerging from
this same consciousness" with this explanation:
> "Emerge?" You do love that word don't you?
> I would put it another way. We were both born into
> consciousness (Quality), both knew the same
> consciousness shortly thereafter, but as we developed
> had different life experiences that gradually changed the
> particularity of our consciousness. We soon recognized
> we were separate individuals who could never know
> another's consciousness, only that we were conscious.
>
> The key word is "share." As Pirsig points out, everyone
> has a different (individual) life experience. But sharing
> does not make for a collective experience, e.g., you'll
> never know what it's like to be kissed by you.
You seem to be saying that we all share the same consciousness except that
we each have different experiences within it. I think that would be
Hoffman's view, as well as that of Franklin Merrill-Wolf. I quoted this
Wolf statement in last week's Values Page essay on autonomy and freedom.
> "The One, nonderivative Reality, is THAT which I have symbolized by
> 'Consciousness-without-an-object.' This is Root Consciousness, per se,
> to be distinguished from consciousness as content or as state, on the one
> hand, and from consciousness as an attribute of a Self or Atman, in any
> sense whatsoever. It is Consciousness of which nothing can be
> predicated in the privative sense save abstract Being. Upon It all else
> depends, while It remains self-existent."
As you know, I have some problems with this epistemology. Because
consciousness infers an object as its contents, it is the subjective mode
of awareness. In MoQ terms, consciousness is SOM; for the Essentialist, it
is an attribute of the individual. Therefore, it cannot logically be the
undivided Quality (DQ) proposed by Pirsig, nor the absolute Essence of my
philosophy. You needn't negate subjective reality, however, if you can
accept Cusa's concept of a primary source that is the coincidence of
subject and object. In Cusan logic, both are 'not other' to the source.
This
definition for Essence (Quality?) rules out Arlo's "collective
consciousness"; so perhaps by simply substituting "subjectivity" for
"consciousness" you will have won your argument.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the debate.
Best regards,
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/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Dec 07 2005 - 06:08:10 GMT