[MD] Ham and DM on Being and social being

[David M]

Hi Ham

> "According to these philosophers (but in my own words): Values are 
> feelings
> that accompany all experience.
>
> "By experience, the existentialists mean all experiences of which we are
> aware (that is, of which are conscious). These experiences include all
> thoughts - each and every one of them, no matter how unemotional or
> unfeeling our thoughts seemingly might be. ...
>
> "By values, the existentialists ...mean that all our experiences of the
> natural and social worlds come to us valued as to their worth, that is, 
> how
> attractive they are or how much something should be avoided.  Consider all
> the objects, events, and processes that are in our experience: for 
> example,
> the noise of a jet airplane overhead, the face of a man, a baseball flying
> toward our baseball glove, a large book, a plate of food, a sports car
> travelling fast, ...the babble of crowds in Times Square, a flash of eyes 
> in
> a bar, doing the laundry, and so on.  If we would experience all these
> things neutrally, we would experience each of them as having the same lack
> of importance and lack of usefulness to us; but we experience none of 
> these
> elements of our experience with such neutrality.  Each item is experienced
> by us as a complex of feelings.  These complexes of feeling distinguish 
> one
> experience from another as much as do the "objective" properties of the
> objects (or events) we experience....

DM:  objective properties -a contradiction in terms

> "What the existentialists say, about value, is that each of us lives 
> within
> a world of values.  There are values of many kinds, all of which are
> feelings (in some sense), rather than perceptions or cognitive thoughts:
> emotion (e.g., happiness, fright), expectation, alienation, conscience
> (e.g., duty, guilt), and confusion are values.
>
> "We never experience the world of objects, events, persons, and social
> relationships in which we live as those items might be described and
> measured by scientists.

DM: Scientists have to start with the same experiences we all have.
They reduce the number of qualities they are interested in for scientific
purposes, they imagine the relationships between things that are not
living and try to describe them mathematically. They have no special
'objective' method that can do without normal experience.

 We can never experience a fast sports car, as might
> be described by a physicist or an engineer.

DM: So they are talking about imagined rather than experienced
events/processes.

 The engineer might describe the
> sports car as a metallic object of certain physical dimensions, of 
> unloaded
> and loaded weights, with an engine that consumes 18 gallons of gasoline
> while travelling 360 miles at an average of 55 miles per hour.  Such an
> object can exist as a construct only within scientific theory and
> engineering practice; but it cannot so exist within our experience, void 
> of
> feeling.

DM: Yep.

> "We should conclude by mentioning that the values which we experience are
> precognitive and determinative.

DM: Originally, but my experience of language, speech, etc is valued and
linguitic.

 By precognitive, I mean values exist as
> part of our experience before we are able to think about them or be
> conscious of them. By determinative, I mean that values set up the 
> structure
> of our conscious experience (for instance, by separating some experience
> from us as 'objective,' and some experience as 'subjective')."


DM: There is no such split pre-cognitively. See if you can persuade me 
otherwise.

   [Source:
> http://shroudedindoubt.typepad.com/bag_of_worms_yet_words/2005/01/values]
>
> HP, previously:
>> Because value is subjective, there is no
>> "inter-subjective" value experience.
>> No other person can sense my values.
>
> DM:
> I disagree.
>
> Why? Are you a psychic or mind reader?  Do you not believe that your
> subjective desires, pleasures, fears, tastes, attitudes, etc., are
> proprietary to your self?  You won't convince me that these feelings are 
> all
> manifested in your behavior.

DM: 'All' is not required, but most of the time yes. I don't read emails and
despair that mere letters on a screen will ever give me any idea of what Mr 
Ham
is really like. Here's your email, and something or other is understood, 
enough
of it on the money to make conversation possible between real people.

>
> DM:
>> I don't like: "the Absolute is finished and complete",
>> because it seems at odds with the work in progress,
>> struggling to evolve, that this cosmos seems to be.
>> In the beginning was some 'lack'.
>
> The 'lack' begins with negation.  Otherwise, you've described the 
> cosmology
> accurately, despite your dislike of it.  As you say, existence is a "work 
> in
> progress", as opposed to the stasis of the Absolute.  You are endeared to
> existence because you are still struggling to become complete, as we all
> are -- indeed, as the history of the cosmos is.  All of existence is in 
> flux
> because it lacks completion.  Anything reduced from Essence seeks to
> complete the circle of existence in this way.  What drives this "struggle 
> to
> evolve" is the value of the Source.

DM: Sure is like a kind of falling, and we try to make a few worthwhile
twists and turns on the way down or up.

>
> I don't presume to comprehend the REASON (i.e., "teleogical necessity") 
> for
> actualized existence with its separation of an autonomous sensibility from
> otherness.  Reason is an intellectual construct of the human mind that
> interprets all events as cause-and-effect; it has no grasp of what is
> "moral", perfect or complete in absolute reality.  I see man's "innocence"
> as necessary for his freedom.  And, at least at my present state of
> "evolvement", I've encountered no alternative thesis that has shaken my
> belief in this cosmology.
>

DM: Are we separate from what is Other? I'd say DQ is always a kind
of opening to what is Other.  Is cause and effect very important in life?
Sure I rely on the ground not opening up to swallow me up, and food
giving me nutrition, etc, but otherwise we are unbelievably free. To travel
across the planet, to use our bodies, to speak to each other. The sad
thing is how we are all socialised and do and say only those things that 
will
not surprise anybody and are very conventional and conformist. Maybe
virtual reality is more important than we realise and will change what human 
beings are
but freeing them from social convention.


Thanks for the chat.
David M