[MD] Percepts and Concepts

[Ham Priday]

On July 4, 2009 at 4:56 PM, John Carl wrote --


> Ok Ham, now you have to aknowledge that you are playing a game here.
> Because you went from "taking relatively simple stuff and erecting
> complex unintelligible verbiage out of it" on one day to taking complex,
> unintelligible stuff and making it relatively clear and simple on the 
> next.
> That can't be by accident.

Because I'm not playing a game of words here but trying to express concepts, 
I've learned to tailor my language to the correspondent.  If the shoe fits, 
wear it in good health.

> I have just a few comments:
>
[Ham, previously to Krimel]:
> Could you stub your toe without the brick (otherness) in your path or
> sense hunger without valuing food (otherness)?  Sure, hunger and a sore
> foot are unpleasant sensations.  But pain and discomfort are not values,
> it's their remedy that we desire and value.

[John]:
> You're hitting on a bugaboo of mine, the "values" vs value ambiguity.
> Somebody really needs to fix this thing.  We all value good values and
> the best values are disambiguous.
>
> Perhaps another name for designating just Essential value.
> Got any suggestions?

Yes.  The first thing to understand is that all value is realized, and the 
realizer is a subject.  While survival may be a value from the human 
perspective, biological instinct and organic response mechanisms 
automatically serve this purpose in simple organisms.  Only man has the 
capacity to discern moral and esthetic values and the freedom to choose 
accordingly.  But the values that drive man's behavior are not "universal" 
but relative to his sensibility and the situation he confronts.  Finally, 
all values are derived from Essence, but "Essential Value" is not relational 
or conditional.  Although it accounts for our sensibility, we do not realize 
it directly but experience it differentially in the things and happenings 
that are its finite representations in the objective world.
I discuss these aspects of Value in an essay I've archived on my Values 
Page.  Here's an excerpt that addresses your question. ...

"For the Essentialist, Value is foundational.  Indeed, it is the value of a 
thing that we seek in our experience of the world.  Value, whether a tactile 
sensation, color, sound, taste or smell, is what fills our awareness and is 
retained in the memory of our experience.  We realize many kinds of value, 
of course, ranging from our emotional reaction to esthetic beauty to our 
intellectual appreciation of freedom and justice.  But if value is neither a 
property of the thing observed nor an attribute of the observing subject, 
where does it come from?

"The epistemological argument is that if value has a desideristic or 
emotional basis, it is a psychosomatic phenomenon which cannot be primary or 
innate in the objective world.  And the epistemologists are right.  Value is 
subjective -- once it is made aware.  But the source of perceived value is 
essential; that is to say, it "resides in" Essence.  And, just as rocks and 
trees and houses are essentially not differentiated objects, value is 
essentially not relative.  What we psychically apprehend is differentiated 
"otherness".  We sense the value of this otherness incrementally while 
cognitively constructing the objects by which they are identified.  In other 
words, otherness is primary, and Value and Being are secondary or derived 
experience."
        -- An Epistemology of Value, www.essentialism.net/Epistemology.htm

Thanks for your interest, John.  I hope this helps.

Regards,
Ham