[MD] subject / object logic

[Ham Priday]

Happy Labor Day, Joe --

I'm glad your "burning question" doesn't really concern the center of the 
sun!

> IMO the burning question of the day for the ancient Greeks was:
> How do we know things move? Heraclitus suggested we can’t
> step into the same river twice. Socrates insisted he knew nothing
> (I am empty) and when he continued asking questions they jailed
> him for corrupting the youth and he willingly drank the Hemlock.
> Plato changed the question to: How do I know? And proposed a
> world of ideas we contact.  Aristotle, then proposed a theory of
> abstraction which required a split between and mind and body
> inasmuch as the mind was capable of abstracting the essence from
> a concept and giving it intentional existence in the mind.
>
> Aquinas followed Aristotle, but at the end of his life declared:
> "Everything I have written is as straw." Now motion is still the
> question. Do I know in organic motion, (if I do it is somewhat
> indefinable), cellular motion of the brain, or electronic motion
> of the computer?

Plato's question holds the clue.  "What do we know?" is the primary 
epistemological question.  What we know is an intellectual interpretation of 
what we experience. What we experience is the appearance of a dynamic, 
multiplistic and relational system.  The simplest definition for existence 
is "the appearance of differentiated otherness".  But more important than 
our ability to determine the real nature of experiential reality is a fact 
lost to most scientific investigators: We are aware of it.  Each of us is 
the cognizant subject of an objective otherness.  Unlike data processed by a 
computer, appearance requires both a subject and an object.

> Ham, I prefer the knowledge of quality through organic motion
> some of which is indefinable, knowing how to hit a home run.
> The cellular motion in the brain is definable, words. The electronic
> motion of the computer carrying knowledge is "?" Perhaps, the
> knowledge of "Essence" is a connection to electronic motion too
> quick for awareness in experience.

Hmmn, let's see. "Knowledge of quality through organic motion."  That 
doesn't express anything comprehensible to me.  It would have more meaning 
if you had said: Knowledge of Essence through organic experience.  Since 
knowledge is interpreted from experience, and experience is organically 
derived, our interpretation is limited by  organic perception, which is a 
very narrow focus.  For example, we observe things at a point in time called 
Now and from a point in space called Here.

> IMO the primary metaphysical reality is the evolution of levels,
> mechanical and conscious, objective and subjective.

To use your analogy, a home run is experienced as a batter hitting the ball, 
then the ball hurtling toward the outfield, then the batter rounding the 
bases, and finally the umpire signaling a home run.  The "event" that you 
interpret as a "home run" is actually a series of experienced actions 
leading up to the knowledge that a home run has been scored.  Like all other 
events in existence, including the totality of an individual's life, it is 
experienced as a process.  When your life on earth is completed your reality 
will have been a singular event, just like the home run in a baseball game.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Zeno reasoned that an arrow is only in one 
place during any given instance of its flight.  But if it is in only one 
place, it must be at rest. The arrow must then be at rest at every moment of 
its flight.  Logically, motion is impossible.

Ultimate reality will not be found in parsing and categorizing knowledge 
gleaned from experience, because what we experience is a psycho-organically 
constructed appearance of otherness.   Since the primary source, ultimate 
reality, cannot logically be an otherness, appearance is a fiction.  IMO a 
metaphysical theory that is anchored to experiential knowledge will never 
rise above it.

--Ham