[MD] Birth of subjects & objects

[Ham Priday]

David M, Steve, Bo, and DMB (if he's still listening) --


I have more to say on this topic, David, but first I have to clarify a 
statement about my philosophy of Essence that DMB has misinterpreted.  I 
mention it in this thread because it is relevant to the origin and nature of 
subjective consciousness.

Ham (previously):
> It might be helpful to mention that I reserve "existence" for
> experiential (objective) reality, assuming that what does not
> exist (Essence) simply "IS".

DMB responds:
> This is one of the stupidest sentences I've ever read.
> What does not exist simply is? That's pure nonsense.
> Obviously, if it does not exist then it simply isn't.
> And the first part of the sentence makes no sense either.
> My whole point was to distinguish experience from objective
> reality, but you simply re-confused them here. It's hopeless.
> I give up.

Since I don't want to go on record as writing a "stupid sentence", even if 
it is DMB who has made this appraisal, some clarification is in order.

Here's what DMB missed in his haste to dismiss my statement as nonsense. 
EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IS MADE AWARE BY EXPERIENCE.  Inasmuch as objective 
reality is experiential (i.e., beingness divided by nothingness), it does 
not define Essence.  Essence is the "potentiality to be" but not being 
itself.  Its potentiality is pure "Is-ness".  The fundamental nature of 
Essence is best expressed as the predicate "IS".  All else is an 
"emanation", "mode", "negation", or "reduction" (depending on your ontology) 
of this absolute potentiality.  Thus, Essence is not a created "existent": 
it does not exist.  If DMB is unable or unwilling to accept the logic of 
this concept, that's his problem.

My reason for bringing this up here is that what we call Sensibility and 
Value are derived from Essence, but they can only be experienced by a 
cognizant agent that stands apart from its undivided source, that is not 
intrinsically essential.  This is why I place great importance on something 
Bo has asserted: "Consciousness is the Value of the S/O divide."  I think he 
has the principle exactly right, except that he's attempted to make it work 
in the context of Pirsig's levels hierarchy.

If subjective awareness is the value of the existential dichotomy 
(sensibility/otherness), then human beings are born as "sensible agents" of 
value.  In other words, the essence of the individual is value-sensibility. 
Everything experienced in existence is an intellectual construct of this 
value which binds (draws, attracts?) the self to its other-beingness. 
Although the particular forms of experienced objects and their precise 
arrangement in space/time follows a cosmic design, everything that is 
experienced is representational value.  And it is the individual agent whose 
value-sensibility "creates" beingness by bringing it into conscious 
awareness.

I hope this helps explain why the newborn individual, who is "deprived of 
beingness", not only seeks out its value experientially but carefully and 
methodically identifies those objects (patterns?) of being which complement 
its value sensibility.  In this role, the individual is an autonomous agent. 
Subjects and objects are born with the individual.

Questions?  Comments?  Chastisements?

Regards,
Ham