[MD] Probability

[Ham Priday]

Platt [Dan Glover mentioned]--

(You can file this as Ham's second dissertation on negation theory.)

When I last left you, Reinier had defined the condition of experiential
existence to be a "duality" in which 'A' always presumes 'not A'.  This
suggested "choice", i.e., the decision to experience 'A' or not to
experience 'A'.  But I wasn't looking for a "duality of choice"; I was
looking for a "dichotomy of intellection".  What I envisioned was the
intellect
operating as a "negator", like Essence.  Essence creates otherness by
negating nothingness.  This difference creates the self-other dichotomy.
Intellection creates being by negating otherness.  This is what
differentiates experience.  But because pure otherness is unrecognizable to
the finite intellect, it apprehends only the otherness that corresponds to
its value sensibility at a given moment.  It does this by negating all the
rest (of otherness).

So when I read Dan Glover's post of 3/17, I knew I had found the
differentiating dichotomy I was looking for.  Dan said:

> This reminds me of Buckminster Fuller's work.
> All forms have what he called complementaries...
> the form of a triangle (for example) isn't simply one
> triangle. Rather (according to Fuller) it is actually two
> triangles ...the triangle delineated by the area inside
> the lines, and a second triangle delineated by the area
> outside the lines. This second triangle negates the first
> ...one would not exist without the other.

When I observe a visual figure delineated by three connecting lines, I
recognize it intellectually as a triangle.  I also become subjectively aware
of the values this figure imparts to my sensibility -- its shape, symmetry,
color, and relevance to other triangular-shaped objects recalled from
memory, especially my introduction to this geometric form.  Like most
people, I learned to identify a triangle by the shape of the area inside the
lines, disregarding what may lie outside the lines.  But I might also have
learned it as an infinite plane with a tri-cornered hole in its center.
This would of course reverse the visual values imparted to me by the normal
experience of a triangle.  In fact, I could not experience both triangles
simultaneously because, as Fuller states, the second triangle would negate
the first.  Yet, if we eliminate the subjective values of this experience, a
triangle is still objectively (intellectually) a visual figure delineated by
three connecting lines.

What's the metaphysical significance of this observation?  You'll recall
that I've defined the objects of experience as "universal", meaning that
they are universally recognizable, quantifiable, and localizable in the
space/time world.  Objects are "beings"; that is, they are perceived as
finite forms of a substance called "matter", and the data we've gleaned from
them comprise the vast body of intellectual knowledge.  There's one hitch to
objective knowledge, however: being and awareness are co-dependent
contingencies.  We can't have being unless it can be made aware.  And
awareness is proprietary to the individual, which means that being is
contingent upon one's awareness of it.  In short, being-aware defines the
dichotomy of relational existence.

How do we become aware of being, then?  Would you believe it if I said that
it comes from Value?  After all, Pirsig said that "Quality is the primary
empirical reality of the world" and equivocated it with value in the
statement: "...the very existence of subject and object themselves is
deduced from the Value event."  What is the Value event?  I submit that it
is the moment of differentiation that occurs when awareness captures the
value of otherness.  Since finite sensibility can only grasp this value
"conditionally" (incrementally), we don't sense the value of otherness all
at once but gradually and differentially, in the space/time mode of human
awareness.

During the Value event, the brain is alerted to the conditional state of our
awareness and is wired with neurons to translate the sensed values into a
specific object of experience.  It achieves this by negating (rejecting,
filtering out) all otherness that is not relevant to the values perceived.
This leaves a "remainder" -- a residue of otherness -- which is stored in
memory as the finite image of
a triangle, for example.  Now, if the values transmitted to the brain were
reversed in polarity, we would experience an area of indefinite size with a
tri-cornered hole in its center.  (Thank you, Dan!)  And if there were no
differentiated values perceived, we would experience nothing.  Why?  Because
awareness itself is nothing and because the value that fills it, like
everything else in existential reality, is relative to changes or
differences that become-aware to the individual in the course of a lifetime.

So you see, Platt, negated experience isn't all that complicated.  I've
covered both primary and secondary negation here, and you probably didn't
even notice ;-).

Best regards,
Ham