[MD] Three Hot Stoves

[Ham Priday]

Greetings of the day, John --



> Greetings Ham,  What relief you offer!  I will snip away the areas
> where I see agreement between us, and focus on those issues of
> substantiatve disagreement.  First off:
>
> Ham:
> I quarrel only with your suggestion that plants "conceptualize" or
> "realize".  Living organisms lacking cerebro-neural systems have
> no conscious means to process or integrate data conceptually.
>
John:
> "Conscious integration of conceptual data" is what humans do.
> But isn't it possible that "unconsciously", other life forms integrate
> the "data" of their experience?  Plants certainly integrate light into
> their being, and here "conceptually" just means to me, that part
> of their experience which is carved out from the whole and used
> to make sugars.  A key semantic quibble, imo.

I have no doubt that there is "integration" of environmental factors, but 
not by consciousness, which is my point.  Without consciousness no value can 
be realized.  Photosynthesis, O2/CO2 exchange, and genetic
structuring are all exhibited by plant life.  But these are biophysical 
processes designed into the species in the same way that gravity and the 
conservation of energy are designed into the solar system.  The only value 
involved here is the self-subsistent order of the universe that WE realize 
in observing natural phenomena.

[Ham's definition, previously]:
> Actualization: "to make or become actual or existentially real"

[John, previously]:
> Well even with an extended opportunity to think this through,
> I'm not sure about "making real".  It seems to me that realization
> IS actualization and that's all there is to it.  Plain and simple.

[Ham]:
> The only problem I see with that premise concerns the process of
> abstraction or induction.  For example, you have deduced that plants
> have a concept of light, probably from the fact that they bend toward it.
> While this may be true in your reality, it doesn't make a plant's
> conception real or actual. Has the child who discovers gifts under the
> tree on Christmas day "actualized" Santa Claus? ...
>
> And kindly explain what you mean by "objectification occurs with
> non-physical objects".  (I'm unaware of any object that isn't physical.)

[John]
> Santa Claus is also real - as a concept.  Santa Claus isn't so much
> actualized by the child, tho, as the parents.  Xmas is all about the
> actualization of the Santa Claus concept in the lives of our children.
> Why do we parents do this?  Because it seems good to do and has
> been done to us.  We just pass along the actualized conceptualizations
> of our forbears.

Belief in Santa is a cultural tradition which children at an appropriate age 
come to realize, usually without traumatic affect.  You might say they 
"actualize the myth" as an "object" of their imagination; but that isn't 
what I mean by actualizing (objectivizing) existents.  Neither are the 
Theory of Gravity, "Ghosts", or other intellectual precepts entertained by 
the mind.

[Ham, previously]:
> By way of clarification, the value-sensibility is "automatic";
> the actualization is "intentional".  (I don't recall "automatic"
> being a big point of Rand's Objectivism.)

[John]:
> I believe that particular point is more finely drawn in Leonard Peikoff's
> explication of Rand's Objectivism than with Rand herself, but we'll
> leave that aside for the moment and address your distinction in your
> clarification.  For I do differ with you on value-sensibility being
> automatic.  How could something be viewed as automatic, when it
> takes so much training and cultural programming in the first place?
> Do you think umpteenth Inuit definitions of snow come about
> "automatically"?  And why then, do warm-climate descendants
> fail of making such distinctions?  Surely if the value-sensibility of the
> snow-men was merely automatic, it would arise in any interactions
> with any humans.  I'd say value-sensibility arises out of a process
> that has elements of intentionality (caring enough to look closer)
> AND automatic reactionism (Jumping off hot stoves).
> Value-sensibility then, arises narrative fashion out of the context of
> an organism's relationship with its environment.  A Codependent
> arising that combines both intentionality and automatic responsiveness
> in all aspects.

You are talking about experientially-defined value precepts, not 
undifferentiated Value (e.g., Pirsig's DQ).  My contention is that 
value-sensibility is the essence of Awareness.  We recognize things by their 
relative value to us, but sensibility is primary to the experience of 
objects and our interpretation of existence.  Value-sensibility is not a 
"process", as experience or intellection is, but the very core of 
self-awareness.

> I would say that the conceptualization of reality is an ongoing and
> infinite process.  We never conceptualize it all.  But I place no
> significance on that which is unrealizable, and a great deal of
> significance on that which hasn't been realized *yet*.
[SNIP]
> "Unrealized yet", is entirely different from "unrealizable".  That which
> is unrealize-able, is pragmatically non-existent.  I seriously doubt your
> axiom, also.  I'd say it just the opposite of you - individual freedom is
> impossible without access to absolute knowing.  However, 'access to"
> is a far, far cry from "attainment of".  Keep that distinction in mind,
> and we'll get along just fine.

John, who do you know that has "access to absolute knowing"?  Can you even 
imagine how access to (attainment of) absolute knowledge would affect an 
individual's free will and behavior?  Meister Eckhart wisely pointed out 
man's "innocence" as an existent and the reason for it.  For one thing, 
there would be no point in living, since life affords only a taste of values 
in a range of contrariety.  Indeed, not knowing the Truth, not being one 
with the Creator, is what makes that absolute goal valuable.  The 
individual's desires and aspirations in life (knowingly or unknowingly) are 
centered on the essential Source.

"The soul knows about everything but itself," Eckhart said; yet " ...within 
itself the soul is free, innocent of all instrumentalities and ideas."  If 
man did not enter the world an innocent creature - if his knowledge were not 
limited - he would not be free to shape his reality or realize its values. 
As I wrote in the conclusion of my thesis: "the inscrutability of life's 
meaning confirms the teleological [divine] nature of our experienced world."

This point has apparently failed to register, John.  I would suggest that 
you contemplate it in the context of the 'Philosophy of Individual Valuism' 
from which I quoted previously.  Get back to me when you've thought this 
through.

Essentially speaking,
Ham