[MD] Objectivism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Hey, Laramie --

You've got to get away from the office, wean yourself off that nasty
capitalist habit, and spend more time on important things like the MD forum.
It's people like you who are destroying the middle class, and you know how
essential they are to a democratic society.  Before you know it the middle
class will be on welfare too, and you'll be paying for the whole shebang!
And when you visit the polls today, be sure to cast your vote for someone
who wants to "move America
in another direction"; but don't push them for an explanation.  That's a
very popular platform in this year's election, particularly since "moving
America forward" didn't seem to work too well in the last one.   (Sorry to
politicize, but I'm sure you can appreciate that such op-eds help keep the
liberals at bay.)

I wrote:
> What you and Wilber are describing is the psycho-intellectual
> development of a human being.  This is not epistemology or
> philosophy.  To say 'we become aware of proprietary awareness'
> (PA) is a tautology.  PA is primary to its contents; it is the
> pre-intellectual sensibility to value, the 'single-point perspective'
> that defines the continuity of selfness through ALL stages of
> development."

You said:
> If PA is primary to its contents AND pre-intellectual sensibility to
> value, what is the meaning of "value" in this context?  How can there
> be value in the absence of content?
>
> As soon as you introduce value, psycho-intellectual development
> comes into the picture.

Glad you raise that question.  The more I think about Value, the more I see
it in the Pirsigian sense; that is, as the "primary empirical reality".
Except that I view it as the representational "object" of Essence to the
finite mind.  You are correct that there is no value in the absence of
content.  But PA (and thanks for coining that acronym) is the focal point or
locus of the self which has no content but an affinity for Value.  There is
nothing like it in existence, since PA doesn't exist and, in its primal
form, is only the "potentiality" for being-aware.

I know this sounds mystical, but think of it this way.  If you can imagine
Essence as absolute Sensibility, then proprietary awareness could be defined
as the actualized (differentiated) mode of sensibility -- in other words, a
"microcosm" of the Absolute.  Hence, my "third description" which seems to
have impressed you: "the 'single-point perspective' that defines the
continuity of selfness through ALL stages of development."

Most people accuse me of deliberately abusing logic when I speak of the self
as a "negate", because a negate is a nothingness.  I understand their
objection to this concept.  (I was opposed to it too, until about two years
ago when the idea of a "negational" Essence fell into place.)  In my
Creation hypothesis, I state that Essence "creates" by negating nothingness.
Why nothingness?  Because, as the antithesis of Essence, it is the only
absolute that can be "other" to Essence, which itself is "not-other".  And,
since we have no logic for absolutes, I've invented one.  The negation of
nothing by the absolute (Essence) does not equate to nothing; it creates a
"dichotomy" which I define as awareness/beingness, commonly understood as
Existence, the metaphysical ground for which is nothingness.

Thanks to Sartre and the existentialists, I had a ready-made paradigm for
this cosmology: Awareness seeks the Being of existence for itself.  This
"seeking" or affinity of the nothingness-self for its estranged essence in
Being is what I call Value.  It is representational (sorry Ms. Rand),
conditional and relational, but it serves marvelously well to make Being
Aware, thus providing the means by which the Value of Essence can be
realized by an extrinsic and autonomous agent.  Ultimately, the agent
"becomes" the value lost to it in existence, nullifying the primary
negation, canceling the dichotomy of self/other, and restoring the perfect
integrity of Absolute Essence.

I refer to this paradigm as the "Negate Cycle of Essence" in my thesis and,
while the details may be fuzzy, it has resolved the perennial questions of
cosmology for me, as well as giving me a philosophy I can believe in.  You
paid me a high compliment (I think) when you said "I believe Essentialism is
ultimately a universal, Kosmocentric perspective."  I do think it's a
philosophy that could have universal appeal, but I'm not quite sure what a
"Kosmocentric perspective" is.  I'll check into Ken Wilber, but perhaps
you'll be kind enough to explain it to me.

Thanks for another opportunity, and keep in touch.  (I'm particularly
interested in how you see the fundamental axioms of Objectivism, as outlined
by Peikoff, squaring with the MoQ -- re: my recent exchange with Micah.)

Essentially yours,
Ham