[MD] Ham and DM on Being and social being

[Ham Priday]

Hi David --

DM:
> My point is that properties are a form of experience
> and there is no sense in talking about some kind of
> objective properties as if these existed outside of
> the inter-relationship we call experience.
>
> Sure we create models, and construct formal patterns
> and relationships in the form of laws, forces, etc, but
> prior to this is experience on which it all has to rest, if we
> get the order wrong we might be so stupid we imagine we
> can explain experience in terms of laws and forces which
> are unavoidably an abstraction from experience and so
> obviously only have a use for relatively rare and repetitive
> aspects of reality, unless you're a robot.

I think what you're saying is that the phenomena "out there" that we give so
much attention to and strive to explain by physical laws and principles -- 
when properly understood -- our own intellectual constructs of Value.  I
agree.  It's as if we were holding a mirror to ourselves and measuring the
image we perceive as finite units of reality.

Still, existence is a fully functioning, self-supported system in which
everyone participates in his own way.  We cannot so easily dismiss S/O as
our ground of being, nor the dichotomy of self and other that allows us to
realize its value.

HP, previously:
> The brain isn't confused; it sorts [values] out as a state
> of feeling relative to the object or event experienced, then
> proceeds to "objectivize" that object or event in the
> space/time world.

DM:
> Only much later, becoming cognitive. Early on it is all about
> the emotions, loves, fears, foods, mates, preditors, etc.
> Objects is such an abstraction.

Love, fear, and (esthetic) taste are pre-cognitive values sensed
emotionally.  Foods, mates, preditors, etc., are their representative
objects experienced cognitively.  Subjective awareness senses the value;
intellect constructs the objects.  Thus, sensory awareness and experience
are proprietary, whereas objects are (symbolically) universal.  It appears
we've reached an impasse on the S/O epistemology.  I regard that as a minor
divide between us.  (Your pessimism may be of more serious concern ;-)

Cheers,
Ham