[Moq_Discuss] [MD] Aristotle & DQ

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Platt --


Sorry to divert you from your political discussions, but it's always good to 
hear from you.

> I can't help but take issue with your assertion that "consciousness"
> (awareness) is a cognizant attribute of being human" since I'm
> convinced beyond a doubt that my cat, UTOE, is also aware and
> knowledgeable albeit not at the same level as you and I. Now, maybe
> you didn't exclude nonhumans in your statement, but that's
> how I read it.

I can't speak for UTOE (can he speak for himself?) but I'm not deliberately 
excluding animals from either sensibility or awareness.  As for "cognizance" 
there are sufficient limitations, even for primates, that make me less 
certain.  No offense to UTOE, but for me, to be cognizant means to possess 
understanding, particularly the cause-and-effect kind of intelligence that 
we normally associate with humans.  I'm not sure, for example, that UTOE 
knows that the string you dangle before him is under your control.  If he 
did, he would respond to you rather than to the wiggling string.  Also, I 
doubt very much that UTOE perceives freedom as anything more than not being 
physically confined or restricted (such as being tethered to a leash).  And 
I don't believe in a 'felinethropic' universe.

Seriously, the valuistic world is revealed only to the human species -- at 
least on this planet.  And since man's choices are based on his values, 
rather than on natural instinct, human beings operate on an intellectual 
level that even the best-trained animal is organically unequipped to access. 
Your love and respect for UTOE is not something one would expect an animal 
to demonstrate toward another creature.  But rather than argue the point, 
can we can agree that human life holds more value for mankind than the life 
of a cat?

> As for "sensibility," that too extends way down the biological chain to
> the lowliest virus. Finally, if you think of consciousness as I do as 
> being
> everything there is then consciousness is not a "relative function" but
> simply awareness of awareness. As the physicist Erwin Schroedinger
> put it, "The external and consciousness are one and the same thing."

Wasn't Schroedinger the guy who put a cat in a box with a poison gas 
tripwire, and deliberated over whether it was dead or alive before it was 
observed?

Like Jos, you have expressed Donald Hoffman's position that consciousness is 
all that exists.  Consciousness, like awareness, is relative: it always 
infers an objective referent.  The essence of reality cannot itself be 
dependent on an "other".  That's why I reserve the term Sensibility for 
Essence.  Only the primary source possesses absolute sensibility; we humans 
can only sense its value relationally using neurons and grey matter borrowed 
from beingness.  I know your teleological position that value-perception 
extends down to the atom.  I maintain that man's reality is a construct of 
his value-perception.  Perhaps the result is the same, but the epistemology 
is definitely not.

> Or, in the same vein, William James: "This paper (computer screen)
> and the seeing of it are two names for one indivisible fact."
> (Parens added). In other words, consciousness and reality are but
> two sides of the same coin.  But, I could be wrong.

Which is the "indivisible fact"?  That you are seeing the screen?  Or that 
the screen exists?
Existential facts are always divided between the subject and the object(s). 
That's because we are beings-aware, and that for anything to exist it must 
be experienced.  Existence is a self/other dichotomy.  But this does not 
mean that reality is limited to what we experience.  And this is where you 
and Hoffman miss the boat.  Without an uncreated source, there would be no 
existence, no you, no screen, no UTOE.  Our friend Pirsig also seems to have 
missed this point, as Marsha has quoted him as saying "Dualism dissolves in 
the light of [Noether's theorem] for all (including space and consciousness) 
is energy."  I asked Jos rhetorically if that included Quality.  Maybe for 
Pirsig it does.  Maybe energy is Pirsig's primary source. (I wonder if 
anybody has ever asked him.)

Great to chat with you again, Platt.  Incidentally, can I expect you to 
purchase my book when it comes out?

My best regards to you and UTOE,
Ham