[MD] subject / object logic

[Joseph Maurer]

Tuesday 14 August 2007 2:21:53 Ham writes to Platt and Joe,

[Joe]:
> Ham, if I apply your ontology to ?consciousness'
> correct me if I misunderstand. It seems "essence" is
> "a level of awareness". "Nothingness" seems to be "I am empty".
> "Existence" seems to be "consciousness".
> IMO the MOQ agrees that "Consciousness cannot be
> defined" in that it is the "social level" of undefined MOQ-DQ.

[Ham]
You've been brainwashed by Pirsig. Forget "levels", and start thinking of 
sources. Essence is the ultimate source -- absolute, undivided, immutable.
Any thing, person, thought or feeling is a reduction of Essence. It's 
illusory because it's infiltrated with nothingness, that which Essence is 
not. The egotistical 'I' of selfness and the 'being' of otherness are two 
of the illusions. The real self is value-sensibility because it is primary 
to experience and is the source of the (self/other) dichotomy we call 
existence.


[Joe]
I agree being brainwashed is unfortunate. As far as words go there doesn’t seem to be much difference between "levels" and "sources" as a beginning for thought.  As an amateur singer I have been exposed to the octave for a long time. I think it is unfortunate that you used the term "brain washed" to describe a long observed phenomenon.

"Essence" is the ultimate source." You describe the movement from essence to "real self" in terms of "value sensibility" and "primary to experience". Are you saying that "essence" is embodied in existence?  My understanding of your triad was that "essence, existence, nothing" are coequal principles. What, then, is "real self" in contrast to "essence"? It seems that "real self" being primary to experience and "essence" as the beginning and the end as ultimate source denies experience altogether. If I don’t experience "essence" and "real self" how do I know them?

[Joe]:
> In the record of evolution IMO "hominid" evolves to
> "homo sapiens" and the clue are the cave paintings on the
> wall describing "the other" outside of me.


[Ham]
Interesting, but I don't understand the relevance.

[Joe]
I was thinking of an appeal to a description of experience to describe evolution.

[Joe]:
> If I am empty and you are empty, IMO our relationship leads
> to a further evolution of "law" which is the undefined
> "intellectual level" MOQ-DQ.

[Ham]
As an anology, I would say that you and I are each "half-empty". The 
subjective half of both of us is a non-entity that subsists on an otherness 
that we perceive as being. Or, more simply, every human being is separated 
from his/her essential source (by nothingness). We all seek to regain this 
Essence because of its value to us, but because we cannot experience Essence 
directly, we are driven by its value relative to us. I don't know what you 
mean by "evolution of law", unless you have Teleology in mind. For me, 
Intellect is not a level; it's the ability to reason from cognitive 
perception.


[Joe]
"Cognitive perception" is unclear without a "mind". IMO the movement from hominid to homo sapiens is a movement to the level of consciousness which evolves further to law, the intellectual level.

[Ham]
Thanks to both of you.

Regards,
Ham

Thanks Ham!
Joe




Hi Platt, and greetings Joe --

[Platt asks]:
> How far down the scale of being would you say one
> can reasonably assign "feelings".

What is the "scale of being"?  Did Protagoras not say that "Man is the 
measure of all things"?  If he was right, then all scales, all levels, all 
morality, all parsing of finitude is a construct of human intellection.  If 
Sir William Hamilton was right, "consciousness lies at the root of all 
knowledge."  Donald Hoffman, whom you introduced to me, also said: ""I 
believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists."

[Platt]:
> Does a quantum particle feel like making itself known
> to a human observer, or remain hidden?   Does a hydrogen
> atom feel something happens when it combines with oxygen
> to make water?  Do molecules in the immune system feel
> the presence of an invader? Does a lowly virus feel the
> conditions in which it can multiply? ...

My answer is No to all of these perceptions.   If experience is that which 
is consciously perceived in space/time, and all knowledge is derived from 
this perception, then whatever value we assign to a phenomenon can be no 
more than the value of the perceiver.  In other words, what we experience is 
Value differentiated by organic sensiblity and objectivized by the intellect 
into the things and events that occur in an evolving universe.

[Platt]:
> If an entity must be a living entity in order to possess
> sentience, how do you reconcile that sentient life
> consists exclusively of non-sentient elements?
> Finally, can an entity feel values without being cognizant?

Remember that consciousness is proprietary "apprehension", or what I call 
being-aware.  All sentent beings are organic, and I don't know any 
elements--organic or inorganic--that are sentient in nature.  One reason 
that consciousness is indefinable is that it can't be localized in nature; 
it has no empirical existence.  You'd like me to substantiate animism 
because it supports Pirsig's Quality thesis, but I won't oblige you.  The 
teleology of the universe--it's design, meaning and purpose--is bound up in 
the primary source which, unlike Pirsig's Quality, is non-relational.

[Platt]:
> Does the beginning of "cognizance" mean the
> beginning of self-awareness?

Yes.  Also, the beginning of value-sensibility.  We perceive the emergence 
of the individual as a neurophysical process in time starting at conception. 
Since the only aspects of a new life that we can observe are the fetus and 
its behavior, we reason that individual subjectivity is a biological 
phenomenon.  But, as Sir William said, it's the "root of knowledge" -- the
psychic core of awareness.

[Ham, previously]:
> Conception is "idealized" perception.
> Intellection is "reasoned" perception.
> Observation is "investigative" perception.
> Intuition is inductive or theorized intellection.

[Platt]:
> Am I correct to assume these four attributes are
> restricted to humans?

In my opinion, yes.

[Joe]:
> Ham, if I apply your ontology to ?consciousness'
> correct me if I misunderstand. It seems "essence" is
> "a level of awareness". "Nothingness" seems to be "I am empty".
> "Existence" seems to be "consciousness".
> IMO the MOQ agrees that "Consciousness cannot be
> defined" in that it is the "social level" of undefined MOQ-DQ.

You've been brainwashed by Pirsig.  Forget "levels", and start thinking of 
sources.  Essence is the ultimate source -- absolute, undivided, immutable.
Any thing, person, thought or feeling is a reduction of Essence.  It's 
illusory because it's infiltrated with nothingness, that which Essence is 
not.  The egotistical 'I' of selfness and the 'being' of otherness are two 
of the illusions.  The real self is value-sensibility because it is primary 
to experience and is the source of the (self/other) dichotomy we call 
existence.

[Joe]:
> In the record of evolution IMO "hominid" evolves to
> "homo sapiens" and the clue are the cave paintings on the
> wall describing "the other" outside of me.

Interesting, but I don't understand the relevance.

[Joe]:
> If I am empty and you are empty, IMO our relationship leads
> to a further evolution of "law" which is the undefined
> "intellectual level" MOQ-DQ.

As an anology, I would say that you and I are each "half-empty".  The 
subjective half of both of us is a non-entity that subsists on an otherness 
that we perceive as being.  Or, more simply, every human being is separated 
from his/her essential source (by nothingness).  We all seek to regain this 
Essence because of its value to us, but because we cannot experience Essence 
directly, we are driven by its value relative to us.  I don't know what you 
mean by "evolution of law", unless you have Teleology in mind.  For me, 
Intellect is not a level; it's the ability to reason from cognitive 
perception.

Thanks to both of you.

Regards,
Ham


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