[MD] Art of Value

[Hamilton Priday]

Case:

> Wiki says phemonmenalism goes back to Berkley and Kant. It mentions 
> Russell
> and Mach. But it seems to predate Bohr and I do not at all see how it
> relates to Wheeler. Wheeler's many worlds proposal would not claim there 
> is
> no external reality in any case.

Your mention of phenomenalism was with reference to physicists. 
Philosophers have been phenomenalists since the early Greeks.  Plato's 
Idealism was a kind of phenomenalism, but it became corrupted into 
objectivism when Aristotle began talking about the "essences" of things. 
Although Wikipedia mentions Kant under this heading, it states that "he 
never denied or excluded the existence of objects which were not knowable by 
way of experience."  It also defines phenomenalism as "the view that objects 
are logical constructions out of perceptual properties."  Russell was never 
a phenomenalist.  Elisabeth Ramsden Eames  wrote that in a 1967 interview 
with Russell, he told her he never gave up realism, the causal theory of 
perception, or a realist understanding of objects.

John Wheeler, who named black holes, expressed the idea that "...what we say 
about the universe as a whole depends on the means we use to observe it; in 
the act of observing we bring into being something of what we see. 
...Simply put: without an observer, there are no laws of physics."

His colleague, Andrei Linde at Stanford, said: "I cannot imagine a 
consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness.  It's not enough 
for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to 
anybody.  It's necessary for somebody to look at it.  In the absence of 
observers, our universe is dead."

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman has declared his belief in a subjective 
(i.e., conscious) reality: "I believe that consciousness and its contents 
are all that exists.  ...The world of our daily experience-the world of 
tables, chairs, stars and people, with their attendant shapes, smells, feels 
and sounds-is a species-specific user interface to a realm far more complex, 
a realm whose essential character is conscious.  ...If this be right, if 
consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite 
centuries of effort by the most brilliant minds, there is as yet no physical 
theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter and 
energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience."

> Are you a phenonmenalist? Of what stripe?

I don't wear a "stripe" and dislike the phenomenalist connotation.  I'm an 
Essentialist who believes in a primary absolute source which negates all 
nothingness to cause the appearance of differentiated existence.  If  this 
smacks of idealism or phenomenalism to you, so be it.

[Case]:
> There is the world of private experience that is not separated from us.

All experience is proprietary awareness of something other than ourselves. 
I call this object of awareness the "essent" to distinguish it from absolute 
Essence.  We sense it pre-intellectually as Value and intellectualize it 
differentially as the discreet phenomena of experience.

 [Case]:
> I would say finite existence is a static pattern of values. By that I 
> would
> mean it is a set of relationships that have a highly probability of
> remaining constant.

[Ham, previously]:
> Our reality is Otherness, and we are "the hole of nothingness" in it.

 [Case]:
> I think it is exactly not that. Our reality is completely Us. That is each
> individual creates a unique internal representation of reality. This
> includes memories and an organizational structure. Collectively we create 
> a
> shared reality which is culture.

"Us" -- you and I -- are nothing without the objectivized reality that we 
experience.  Otherwise, I agree with your statement.

[Case]:
> What makes us aware is our nervous system. Values are largely
> perceptual, or sensations informed by past experience.

Value is directly sensible.  Perception is the differentiation of value into 
relational existents (things and events).

 [Ham, previously]:
> When Value is divided by Nothingness, Difference emerges
> and reality appears as objectified.

[Case]:
> Dividing by Zero produces and error. With regards to perception
> and Value formation, being able to detect difference is on equal
> footing with being able to detect similarity.

Every experienced phemomenon is separated from otherness by our own 
nothingness -- even "similar" things.  This is a metaphysical principle, not 
mathematics.  What you call an "error" is the illusion of finite 
multiplicity.

 [Case]:
> We are able to recognize relationships and conceive of reality
> multiplistically because of our memories. Our ability to slip and slide 
> back
> and forth in time is called imagination.

Memory recalls experience as divided things and events; that's how the brain 
records them.  Sliding back and forth in time is a function of memory, not 
imagination.  Imagination is the creative conjuring up of events in a way 
that we have not experienced them.

-- Ham