[MD] Ham and DM on Being and social being

[David M]

Hi Ham

> 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.

DM: Our ability to be changed by what surrounds us makes us the mirror,
and yes in a way we turn this mirror into fragments.

>
> 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.

DM: But unless we experience it, and contemplate its history,workings, etc,
what existence can it be said to have. The 'objective' story we tell 
ourselves
about the cosmos remains our story.

>
> 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.

DM: Yes, objects are an intellectual construction welcome to Pirsig's
analysis of SOM, and recontextualisation of experience as prior to SOM.

 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 ;-)
>

DM: What pessimism? Please explain. You say proprietary awareness , I say 
experience.
Seems a trivial difference, but awareness seems to imply some sort of 
objectifying gap
creating a 'something' aware of objects.