[MD] Intuitive Reasoning?

[Ham Priday]

Case--

[Ham said]:
> Awareness, perception, thinking, imagining, and valuing
> are all "private" events. It's the kind of event that ideas
> come from.  The first step in "framing" this concept is
> not to invent or define terms that will "inspire others" but
> to realize that knowledge and experience are proprietary
> to the individual.  As Pirsig said about his Quality concept,
> "You don't have to define it; everyone knows what it is,"
> I say the same about proprietary awareness.  The problem
> isn't that we don't understand such concepts.  It's that we
> refuse to ACCEPT them.  This is a matter of personal
> choice, not comprehension.

[Case]:
> Not everyone here denies that subjectivity has disappeared
> or is not valuable or that the subject object view is invalid.
> But from an SOM point of view subjective insight,
> intuition, revelation must be subordinated by some kind of
> external validation. Protestants for example believe personal
> revelation must be tested against the written Word in scripture.
> Scientists believe their insights must be tested against logic
> and external empirical testing. There are many examples of
> ideas in science and math where based in insight accepted
> without such empirical or logical testing because they were
> so powerful and yet they are accepted provisionally until
> tests or means of external validation could be worked out.
>
> However, intuition and insight are frequently wrong and
> in the absence of any conceivable test are best kept private.

I take your point, Case.  And it's an important one, in that objective
knowledge must have universal validity to be practically useful.  However, I
submit that the value of truth lies in its capacity to be believed.  As a
'valuist', I would argue that what we believe has more value to the
individual than what can be verified on the intellectual grounds of logic
and universal testing.  I think that realization of
the 'Greater Self' stressed in Buddhism and Eastern mysticism generally
supports this view, as does Judeo-Christian religion.

I was raised a Protestant and am not aware of any edict by which revelation
must be "tested against the written Word".  Even if one has this belief, is
the written Word an "empirical or logical test" of credibility?  If not,
then it would have to be subordinated further to scientific evidence or some
other universal standard of truth.

The apostle Paul, a man well educated in theology, after comparing the two
kinds of knowledge he had received -- reasoned, theological biblical
understanding, and revelation and intimacy with the Spirit of God -- 
confessed that he counted his first rational education as dung (Phil.
3:1-10) when
compared with the value of knowing [ginosko] God (having intimacy and
revelation knowledge from God).

The only command in the Bible to reason is found in Isaiah 1:18: "`Come now,
and let us reason together,' saith the Lord; 'Though your sins are like
scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, they shall be
as
wool.'."  Note that reason is only encouraged if done together with God, and
it involves the use of imagery, a right brain function not normally
considered part of the reasoning process.

Truth, like morality, is relative to the conditions that affect it.  Logical
positivism holds that subjective truth has no validity.  If all we are
concerned about is the utility of a principle and its conformity to a system
of knowledge, then we can dispense with subjectivity and call Truth that
which "works".  But a philosophy founded on Value or Quality -- and, yes,
I'm talking about the MoQ as well as Essentialism -- must defer to
subjective (pre-intellectual) perception in evaluating essential truth.

So that, rather than jump to reason and universal validation as the final
"proof" for a given proposition, I maintain that unless we can accommodate
subjective value in our appraisal of what is true, we are restricting
knowledge to facts about objective phenomena, and this cannot be the "whole
truth".  I know this is a controversial point, and expect to be rebuked in
follow-up posts.  However, if physical reality is an intellectual construct
based on perceived values, is it not more rational to say that the "proof is
in the Value" rather than in the appearance?

Essentially yours,
Ham