[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Ham Priday]

Scott --

I said:

> [W]hile I'm not an essentialist in the platonic sense, my
> philosophy is founded on Essence and my metaphysics
> borrows from the thinking of the Neo-platonists, Eckhart,
> Cusa, and to some extent Hegel (an existentialist).

Scott:
> Yes, but why do you call your source 'Essence', and not
> just, say, 'Source', or 'the One' (Plotinus), or 'the Godhead'
> (Eckhart'), or 'God' (Cusa)?  ...In other words, I don't see
> how the unfolding of your metaphysics in any way depends
> on your choice of the word 'Essence' as the Source, and
> not something else.

My metaphysics doesn't depend on the word 'Essence' but, rather, the
*concept* of Essence.  In a way, your question demonstrates the fallacy of
using words or symbols in place of concepts or ideas.  Words and symbols are
like the dots and dashes of Morse code used to transmit messages; they are
only the medium of communication -- the messengers, not the message.

As to your question, I chose Essence after some deliberation, knowing that
we cannot assign attributes to an infinite source, and that "God" or a deity
conjures up images (i.e., concepts) of an anthropomorphic potentate who
exists in some invisible realm and intervenes in human affairs on an
arbitrary basis.  I had to ask the question: What is the essence of ultimate
reality?  And it became obvious there was no other term needed to express
the primary source.

I asked:
> What do you call an idea ...before it is "expressed"?

 Scott:
> Non-existent. But this is for us non-Awakened fallen
> human beings. In some esoteric sense, there might be
> something like Plato's Forms.  For us, though, ideas
> must be conceptual -- without that we don't know them
> -- and to acquire concepts requires their expression.

You say ideas don't exist, implying that concepts do.  To me they're one and
the same.  An idea or concept is a rationalized construct that a person
creates intellectually from facts, images, or sensations experienced in the
objective world.  He may choose to communicate or "express" this concept to
one or more other persons, in which case the idea or concept may become
shared knowledge, but this doesn't change the original idea. (This assumes,
of course, that the words used to express the concept and the recipients'
intellectual capacity are adequate to avoid misunderstanding or
misinterpretation.)

Scott:
> I can agree that there might be something like an inchoate
> idea, some vague presentiment that hasn't been expressed.
> But the reason for trying to express it, and what is
> accomplished by expressing it, is to make it a concept.
> This is why one says "all language is metaphorical", because
> the first expression must employ metaphors (using old
> concepts in new ways). After a while, they become dead metaphors.

Why is an idea "inchoate" before it is expressed but cogent after it is
expressed?  Do you consider a formal exposition by the author in the form of
a logical syllogism or mathematical equation to be an "expression" even if
no one else sees it?  Do you suppose Archimides' discovery of the density
principle while sitting in the bath wasn't a concept until he revealed it to
others?  Was Einstein's e=mc2 not a concept worked out in his mind before he
published it?  I don't see how you can overlook conceptualization as a
proprietary human function.  It appears to me that your "semiotic reality"
is valid only as a collective system.

Scott continued:
> For me, yes, semiotics has the characteristic of 'essence
> of everything' ...
> But of course in saying it is the 'essence of everything'
> I am not saying that it exists independently of everything.
> So I prefer to just say 'everything is semiotic'.

Surely not everything in human experience involves semiotics.  How do you
explain non-verbal concepts like art, music and morality?  We "express"
music by singing or playing it; we express art by designing, painting or
sculpting it; we express morality by how we deal with others.  Or don't you
believe aesthetic experience or human values qualify as conceptual?

Let me ask another kind of question.  Would you exist as an independent
entity if there were no one else to "express" yourself to?   In other words,
is Scott Roberts a conceptual entity (to himself), or must he be observed by
another to become a semiotic concept?

Scott again:
> Without concepts, as James famously said,
> there would only be "blooming, buzzing confusion".

That may be true, but not for the reasons you've cited.  The creative mind
differentiates  essents from a formless otherness and puts them in order as
particular things and events.  This is the rationalizing of experience that
goes on continuously by each of us.  The confusion James was alluding to
occurs when that process breaks down due to intoxication, psychosis, or
senility.  This is a different paradigm than the expression of one's own
thoughts in order to have them "validated" by others.

 > Ham said:
> Once again, your epistemology baffles me.  And most baffling of all is
that
> you don't posit a starting place for proprietary awareness.  In "The World
> as Will and Idea" Schopenhauer said that the world is an idea insofar as
it
> is an object in the mind of a subject.  His ultimate reality, though, was
> Will (or what we might call "intent"), and he asserted that if the will is
> completely negated the representational world is also negated.  It seems
to
> me that you are using "idea" in that same context, which would seem to put
> you in bed with David who said that the essential "stuff" is an idea.

Scott:
> What is odd about this is that you consider existents
> (like cats) to be illusory, but then you turn around and
> treat consciousness as if it were just a passive recipient
> of these illusions, and you treat language nominalistically,
> as if a succession of received illusions could produce a
> concept.

I maintain that (proprietary) consciousness is an active participant in
creating 'beingness'.
But I also regard finite beingness, as well as the dimensions of time and
space, to be 'illusory' aspects of existential awareness.  That is, they
define our mode of being-aware.  I don't know if I "treat language
nominalistically"; however I do believe that experience is a acquired
serially (in time) and is limited by the conditions of finitude.

I am "pondering" your Wolff aphorism no. 6.  Already I would question his
assertion that "a work of art is first creatively imagined, then projected
in objective form," because I think much of what is created is incrementally
developed, and then refined or reworked into something quite different than
what the artist had in mind.  (I know, for example, that music is
constructed in this way.)  I'm also puzzled by Wolff's use of the pejorative
terms "invidious", "bondage" and "evil" when describing the individual's
"participation in objects".

Does the author suggest a better way to participate in objective reality?
Can you?

Regards,
Ham