[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Scott Roberts]

Ham,

Scott said:
> 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.

Ham said:
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.

Scott:
So let me reformulate my question as: what is the *concept* of Essence that 
leads you to call ultimate reality 'Essence'? What does "the essence of 
ultimate reality is Essence" tell me? Why is it obvious that no other term 
is needed (which follows the question: why is *any* term needed, that is why 
not just call it "ultimate reality").
Ham asked:
> What do you call an idea ...before it is "expressed"?

 Scott said:
> 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.

Ham said: You say ideas don't exist, implying that concepts do.

Scott:
No, I said "an idea...before it is "expressed"" is non-existent (though I 
later qualified this with the notion of inchoate, vague idea). And I should 
add that this only applies to our relative consciousness. Here's Wolff 
again: "At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that 
flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be 
captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never 
isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends with all. 
Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are 
distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is 
endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this 
thought. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols." [p. 
308]

Ham continued:
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:
Yes, but when I say "expressed" that includes expressing it to oneself. In 
other words, to put it into words or some other objective form, either to 
oneself or to others. Before that happens we do not know the idea.

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.

Ham said:
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:
See above.

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'.

Ham said:
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?

Scott:
To avoid confusion, I said I was distinguishing 'language' (as in English or 
Swahili) from 'semiotics', yet here you are reintroducing that confusion by 
restricting 'semiotics' to 'language'. If an action of mine expresses some 
moral position, then that moral position is the meaning of my act (at least 
partially). I may not be able to put that meaning into words, but it is 
still a semiotic act: an observer treats the act as a sign of some moral 
position, that is, does not just evaluate its physical components. The act 
is semiotic.

Ham said:
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:
Yes, I am a conceptual entity to myself. But as Arlo would point out, the 
way I am a conceptual entity to myself has been structured by my being a 
social creature (by living within a particular cultural and linguistic 
community). (Whether, or how far, that social structuring can be transcended 
is an open question).

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

Ham said:
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.

Scott:
Actually, he was referring to babies, who haven't yet acquired concepts.

Ham said:
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".

Scott:
This is just nit-picking. Of course in practice creative work (artistic or 
scientific) occurs in fits and starts, and may end up differently than 
originally imagined. But that is just what I was saying about ideas and 
concepts. One doesn't know what one knows until it gets expressed.

What Wolff is doing here is making an analogy between sense perception and 
artistic expression. The pejoratives apply when one's participation is such 
that one becomes attached to objects, in thinking that happiness lies in 
them, or that unhappiness is caused by them.

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

Scott:
Yes, cease thinking of objective reality *as* objective reality (that is, 
understand it as a creative projection, not as "just there", as signs to 
stimulate self-consciousness, not dead objects to be passively perceived.)

- Scott