[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[Ham Priday]

Welcome Alex, Hi Mark --

Thanks for responding to my post.  As you've both said a lot within an 
empirical framework, perhaps the best way for me to comment is to select the 
statements that most interest me.

[Mark said]:
> I like Ham's notion of accepting and seeing where it leads.
> However, being the biochemist I am, I look for cause.  What divides
> the subject object?  I would say that the social aspect, as you note,
> dominates the subjective through the use of words.  The only purpose
> of such words are for communication.  Such communication does
> indeed spread like a viral infection (to use an analogy), and creates
> cohesion and battle.

Cause and effect is an intellectual paradigm for events experienced within a 
time continuum.
My purpose here is to establish fundamental parameters for the origin of 
experience, and these are pre-intellectual.  Again, I consider the primary 
existential division a Sensibility/Otherness dichotomy.  Sensibility is 
self-evident: it's our localized or proprietary awareness.  This encompasses 
self-awareness (consciousness of a personal identity), plus the awareness of 
an environment external to the self.  That environment is an "other" to us, 
and we know it only in terms of its value (relational, quantitative, 
qualitative, intellectual, esthetic, and emotional).  Objects and events, 
including our biological bodies, are but finite representations of essential 
value that constitute our existential reality.

We sense Value pre-intellectually.  What we "experience" is an ordered 
system in space/time consisting of a diversity of objects (i.e., "patterns") 
which we learn to recognize, manipulate, and utilize for our needs and 
desires.  I maintain that the universal order of existence is a valuistic 
aspect of Absolute Essence.  This gives us a common ground with which to 
communicate, socialize, collaborate, and "moralize" our species.

[A. said]:
> What dawned on me today, while being out walking... is that MoQ and
> Systems Theory within the limits of ordinary epistemology becomes each
> other's DUALS, in a kind of mathematical sense. That is, statements made
> within one becomes dual to some other statement made within the other.
> This hangs together with the view that the one is overcoming the Cartesian
> dichotomy by turning everything into subjects, while the other does just 
> the
> opposite.
> You could also see the dual relationship comparing the divisions. MoQ
> states:
> Primary experience is divided into
> 1. Dynamic Quality
> 2. Static Quality
> The second is then divided into:
> 2.1 Physic
> 2.2 Biological
> 2.3 Social
> 2.4 Intellectual
>
> In Systems Theory you divide what could be described into:
> 1. Concrete Systems
> 2. Abstract Systems
> Next, both types can be divided into:
> A. Closes systems
> B. Open Systems
> And finally open systems are measured according to a scale ranging from
> B.1 Dynamic
> B.2. Mechanic (static)
>
> And thus the one tells you exactly that which the other doesn't.

I would say that, like Mr. Pirsig, you have defined too many categories.  It 
doesn't matter (for my purposes) whether the phenomena we experience are 
biological, physical, or electromagnetic.  Such intellectual classifications 
are only useful when the objective is to apply universal principles to 
practical solutions.  Belief systems, individual freedom, social justice, 
virtue and morality are not derived from natural law but from the values we 
share in common as human beings.  Nature has favored us with the instincts, 
nutrients, and rationality to survive and procreate.  But until we 
understand our unique position and role in existence (which is a not a 
scientific but a philosophical challenge) we shall never achieve the ideal 
culture that our value-sensibility aspires to.

[Mark replied]:
> I do not think the brain is any more advanced now (biologically)
> than it was say 20,000 years ago. However, the complexity of thought is,
> because we have to learn so many facts.  It is still the same brain, with 
> the
> same emotions, but layered with a bunch of sticky notes.  We call this
> advance, but I believe it simply covers the subjective with the objective.
> We look for solutions without rather than within.

I agree with that analysis, Mark.  Empirical facts won't make us any wiser. 
More introspection is needed; but it must be based on a coherent conception 
of ontology that allows for a Designer as well as the Design.  Toward that 
end, I'd appreciate a prospective from both of you on the value epistmology 
I have outlined.  In short, it it worth pursuing?

Essentially speaking,
Ham