[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[Ham Priday]

Hey Mark:

> In terms of love, one could also see love arising before the
> person or special event.  When it arises, we then place it
> on an object such as another person.  This makes more
> sense to me, because it is something we cannot control.
> If it arises outside of us, it makes it uncontrollable.  So,
> love enters in, and then we attempt to rationalize it by the
> other person, or some brain chemistry, or some need.
> But all this is just intellectual justification which indicates
> that love is created by us.  The opposite can be supported
> just as readily.  That is, that love creates the object of desire.
> This would be a case of high Value impinging on our lives.
> Do you see what I mean?

If you can feel "love arising before the person or event" experienced, your 
emotions are more essentialistic than mine!   It suggests that your 
value-sensibility, rather than the object of affection, puts you in the mood 
for love, setting you off to find a person who can be your love-object.  I 
confess this has never been the chronology of my love-life.  But perhaps 
that explains my wife's complaint that I'm not as  "romantic" as she would 
like.

Since "love" and "desire" are both emotional responses to Value, and Value 
does create the "object of desire", I suppose it would be fair to say that 
we create Love as a specific value construct.  After all, the love-object is 
just an ordinary person, like you or me; it is our value orientation that 
makes this person "special" to us.  I like that example because it 
demonstrates that Value is relational to the subject, adding more support to 
the anonymous author's Philosophy of Individual Valuism.
(I shall have to respond to his/her website and learn more about this 
philosopher.)

[Ham, previously]:
> Difference IS the human perspective of otherness that we
> call existence. It is an other because it is not the self but an
> experiential representation of Value [actualized] by the
> self's nothngness. ...

[Mark]:
> Well, I can almost see an equation with your first sentence,
> which makes me daydream.  There is something there, but
> I'll have to wait until my brain sorts it out and tells me. ...
> Value happens to us, and it does not arise from us.
> There is no place for it to arise from.

Oh, but there is.  Have you forgotten, or are you dismissing, my contention 
that Value is the affinity of man for the Absolute Source?   Nothing comes 
from nothing -- not even the Value that is the ground of our being.

 [Mark]::
> I can refer to its emergence in a human form through us.
> In this way, we are not technically actualizing it, but we are
> transforming it.  Again, this may be the same thing.  We
> transform sunlight into heat, we do not actualize the sunlight.
> I will agree that our perception of low and high Q, is a
> complex function of Value and our bodies, but for this to
> happen, a difference in value has to already exist.  Yes,
> kitchen tables and white water rides, different types of
> the same thing.

The difference in value is what man perceives.  I used the prism as a 
symbolic analogy for this differentiation in the Creation section of my 
thesis.  "Pure" Essence enters our sensibility on one side of the prism and 
exists as a spectrum of finite values on the other side.  I've labeled the 
prism "Intellection", but it's really intellectualized experience.  The 
adjacent text reads: "Individual awareness begins when the organic self 
'objectivizes' its other-essent through the barrier of nothingness between 
them in order to delimit or differentiate a range of finite attributes, much 
as a glass prism differentially bends pure white light into its separate 
color components."   Does this convey the concept you and I are trying to 
nail down?

[Mark, on "Knowing"]:
> I was trying to distinguish between intellectual knowing and
> Knowing.  We Know about electrons because they are part
> of us, we do not call them electrons of course.  Such
> Knowing is not confined to an intellectual symbol.  It is this
> Knowing that we experience our place in Quality.  Now,
> intellectual knowing is much more limited, since it must
> create symbols which greatly simplify a complex awareness.
> We Know that within, we know that without.  Such without
> also includes our symbology of our own body and feelings.
> This could be termed the simplified intellectual level, that part
> of the intellectual level that is used for communication.  So,
> I have no problem with man measuring things with symbols,
> but that is far from all things, very far.

The distinction is still fuzzy to me, Mark.  If we know about electrons 
because they are part of us, why didn't the ancient Greeks and Romans know 
it too?  Clearly this is second-hand information derived from objective 
research and not intrinsic knowledge.  Conversely, morality, beauty, justice 
and virtue are measured by human individuals without the aid of symbols. 
The "things" we attribute to these values are what is left of "otherness" 
when the values are appropriated or "reclaimed" for ourselves.  (There!...I 
have spilled some of the "dynamics of value"
that I'd hoped to pursue with you.)

[Mark]:
> What I am trying to ask is when you say "my" what are you
> pointing towards? Others seem to use this form of "I" or my,
> in a way which while rhetorical, must be addressed when
> exploring the nature of things. So, at what point does the
> input get translated into the "I"? From my investigations,
> this question leads to a sense of Quality which is creative
> and not just experienced.

[Ham]:
> Self-awareness is a given, even before the "input stage"
> of knowing. It really didn't require a Descartes to confirm
> that awareness is proprietary to the self. For the newborn,
> the entire world is that self.  Yes, experience is "creative"
> or "effective", as opposed to "passive", in the sense that it
> actualizes otherness as objects. Is that the point you want
> to make?

[Mark]
I agree with you description of self-awareness, well put.
> I am not trying to lead you anywhere.  I am proposing
> a perspective through rhetoric.  Our metaphysical
> perspectives are creative.  They are meant to impart
> meaning through words.  I think that is my point.  There are
> many ways to skin a cat, each one is valid.  At the same
> time, I am trying to rectify your understanding with mine.
> My statements are my attempt to do that for myself,
> and receive discussion on your part.  I have nothing vested
> in my present point of view, except that I want a
> perspective to mature.

[Ham]:
> Human experience is "value specific". Ultimate reality is not.
> However, emptiness or nothingness cannot be a source of
>Value; it can only divide or separate what Value represents
> to the observer. So, yes I agree that the Buddhist notion of
> emptiness (which I believe involves "clearing the mind"
> of extraneous thoughts and desires for meditative purposes)
> has been misconstrued, or at least misapplied to metaphysics.

[Mark]
> My interpretation of emptiness is that it is a result of intellectual
> reductionism.  What better to end up with than Nothing.  One
> cannot subdivide that.  However, such a thing must be arrived
> at through a tortuous path, and cannot be simply stated as a
> concept and understood.  I do not think the Buddhist empties
> his mind by any means, he is thinking all the time, just in a
> different (detached) way.  Of course the use of the adjective
> detached is not nihilistic, but one which symbolizes great
> freedom.  It is the attempt to try to conceive the underlying,
> which you are also doing (in my opinion).  Different words
> may ultimately mean the same thing.

I'll have to turn the tables and let my brain ponder on that, although I 
really don't subscribe to Buddhism as a metaphysics, nor do I see particular 
value in using different words to express one ontology or epistemology.

[Mark]:
> We could say that our purpose is for Absolute Essence
> to see itself.  Kind of like a cloud allows us to see water.
> Maybe not a good analogy, but the best I can come up
> with in this train of thought.

A great analogy, and I like "Absolute Essence seeing itself" as a metaphor 
for man's purpose.  By the process of differentiating otherness 
valuistically we do indeed provide a view of Essence as seen from the 
outside.  Well put!

> Perhaps at some point we can relate what our perspective
> does for us during a snippet of life.  It is this meaning that
> makes it valid, whether or not others agree with it.

I'm game for this, Mark.  Do you want to start the ball rolling?

Essentially intrigued,
Ham