[MD] The Self?

[Ham Priday]

[Ham, previously]:
> Yes, Sensibility is a noun, just as Quality is a noun.
> If you must speak "categorically", Subjective Sensibility is
> a category.  But it is not a "set of relationships."  It is the
> unit of awareness that identifies the individual Knower.

[Krimel]:
> Right this is the point where we either misunderstand
> each other or flat out disagree. The Self is not a thing.
> It is not Quality either. The Self is a process or to be
> strictly grammatical it is a verb. It does not fall into the
> category of things that are discrete. It is not a "unit."
> I might be persuaded that it is not a set of relationships
> but it certainly is what emerges from a set of relationships.

Okay, let's try to resolve the disagreement.  Epistemology is a tricky 
subject to communicate, yet the concept is quite simple if we understand 
that the Self cannot be defined empirically.  Selfness (the "psyche") is the 
non-physical locus of awareness, and I have never regarded the Self as 
Quality or a thing.  The Self is what senses and apprehends its existential 
identity.  (I use "sensibility" and "awareness" in the general sense of 
"knower" or "apprehender", and I reserve "sensation" for proprioceptive 
feelings associated with trauma, pain, hunger, and the five organic senses.)

[Ham]:
> What do you call the part of self that is not a body?
> If each of us produces a body, then this "non-body part"
> is accountable (for producing it).  This is what I call the Self.
>  It is the "awareness" contingent of being-aware.

[Krimel]:
> I guess I would call the part of the self that is non-body,
> the environment.  The Mind part of the Mind/Body that
> arises from the interaction of body and environment.

By making the psyche environmental you reduce it to the objective world, a 
category of "thingness".  Here we do disagree.  You have adamantly rejected 
the notion of Self as a thing, as do I.  What, then, is the "environment" 
from which it is derived?  And is this environment what you regard as 
universal, as in "the collective intellect"?

 [Krimel]:
> Ok first if "Sensation IS value sensibility" then why not
> drop the pretentiousness and use the English term?

I stated above that "sensation" is a subcategory of sensibility, and you 
know that sensibility means value-sensibility to me.  So what term do you 
find "pretentious"?   (I'll use "awareness" if it simplifies things for 
you.)

> Damasio makes a distinction between the physiology of
> emotion of the feeling of emotion and I was put off by that
> until he explained with a concrete example. A man had a
> stroke that damaged an area of the brain that included
> the emotional pathways between the limbic system and
> the cortex. The man now displays many of the outward
> signs of emotional communication: smiling, frowning etc.
> but he does not experience the emotion. In other words the
> physiology of emotion is present but not the experience of
> emotion. ...

And which do you think qualifies as "emotion"?  The exhibited body movements 
or the feeling?  You see, this is not meaningless rhetoric.  Either you 
accept emotional feeling as proprietary awareness or you don't.  You can say 
that a dog is in pain if it lowers its head, shudders and groans.  But 
that's exhibited behavior, not the feeling of pain.  Or, do you deny that 
pain is a feeling?  Evidently Pirsig didn't, as he uses it in an analogy for 
value experience.  Sensibility (awareness) has a very specific connotation 
in epistemology and philosophy.  Equivocation on its meaning only fudges the 
issue of Selfness.

> Experience is a complex process that involves all kinds
> of feedback loops between the body and the environment
> and within the body to a variety of sensory and motor
> systems. If you want the really simple stripped down
> version: the system that is "me" is basically an array of inputs
> (sensation) and a series of outputs (motor functions). ...

It all comes down to the fundamental concept of the subjective Self.  Do you 
accept it or not?  Is what you feel and apprehend unique to you or is it an 
integral part of the objective universe that surrounds you?

> The Self has lots and lots of processes. Only some of them
> become part of conscious awareness. Intellectual functions
> are the distinctly human parts of conscious awareness. They
> involve the slurring of time and expanded access to memory
> but they are generally filtered through the linguistic centers
> which are highly specialized.

What I call the Self is not the metabolic, digestive, respirational, or 
endocrinal processes that go on in my body.  Self is ALL conscious.  It is 
what I am aware of now and as an observer of my passing experience. 
Linguistic processing is irrelevant to this issue.

> Of course we cannot have each other's conscious awareness.
> We share experiences by encoding our personal experience
> into language and decoding the experiences of others from
> language. Language works because there is overlap. It exploits
> the commonality between your experience and mine.

Human commonality by communication is not awareness but behavior that adapts 
to relations.  You are evading the central issue, Krimel.  All this talk 
about process and language as "decoded experience" is an attempt to justify 
the Self as a collective function of nature.  I believe in the integrity of 
selfness, not its distribution throughout the universe.  Why not admit 
either that you don't accept the individuality of the Self or that you are 
persuaded by the MoQ to deny subjectivity?

Until or unless we can "agree to disagree" on that issue, it is useless to 
pursue this line of discussion.

--Ham

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>> [Krimel]
>> If you insist on using your terms, then Self does not invent
>> values, but values invent the Self.
>
> [Ham]
> As I define the Self as value-sensibility, I can understand how values 
> might
> be conceived to "actualize" selfness.  However, it's inconsistent with the
> epistemology of Essentialism.  Not that you particularly care, but I
> consider Sensibility primary to value realization.
>
> [Krimel]
> You are right I have nothing vested in preserving Essentialism. In fact I
> think the sooner you move past it the better. But to do that you have to
> realize that your investment in it is emotional not intellectual.
>
> [Ham]
> Value doesn't "realize"; it simply represents what is beyond sensibility.
> I like to think of it as desire's "referent".  Socrates described desire
> as what man wants and does not possess: "...what he neither has nor
 > himself is--that which he lacks--this is what he wants and desires."
> If Socrates was right, then the object of desire, the thing wanted,
> is the desire's value.  In the differentiated world of existence, we
> yearn for value and experience it in passing things and events.
> But pure (metaphysical) Sensibility needs no object; Value is
> already and immutably its undivided Essence.  That's why in my
> ontogeny Sensibility is negated from Essence to create the entity
> Being-Aware.  Since the individuated self is incapable of sensing
> Essence directly, it experiences the Source as the value of otherness.
>
> [Krimel]
> I have nothing to say about this other than it is an example of how you 
> are
> making up a lot of terms and arguments to support your desire to make
> your 'philosophy' work. Unfortunately it is stated in terms that make
 > evaluation problematic.
>
> Just one example: Sensation is the encoding of physical energy in neural
> impulses. It cannot occur is there is nothing out there to encode or if
> there is no physical organs to do the encoding. Sensation is not a
> metaphysical concept it is a process.
>
> [Ham]
> I think this discussion has been both productive and amiable.  Are you as
> pleased that we are fundamentally in accord as I am?  Or is it more fun to
> quibble over terminology and accuse me of conjuring up "fantasies"?
>
> [Krimel]
> I think the degree of accord is pretty small, but yeah at least it is
> detectable. I still find your understanding flawed and your terminology
> obscure.