Ron --
Of primary importance (to me) is your affirmation on this, which is why I'm putting it first:
Can you accept my concept of Absolute Essence?
On this notion I can stand with you, that value is derived from an absolutely indefinable source... .
That's what I wanted to hear, and I'm holding you to it. As to Logic's place in the scheme of things, you ask:
IS logic and reason a given? a product of language and culture? If so, it changes the nature of Parmenides' arguments. It was not my intention to purposly mislead you in an effort to win an argument, but perhaps a way of challenging our own perceptions of logic and reason.
Ron, you are the expert on Logic as a reasoning method. But here's my take on its role in existence. Logic defines the truth or falsity of fundamental principles that can be inferred from demonstrated experience. These involve identities, relations, and causes as applied to a relational system. Logic is closely allied with numerology and mathematical precepts which also are fundamental to relational systems. Numeric symbols and words are the tools used to express and analyze logical principles. But the principles themselves are conceptual inferences drawn from experience.
Now, the question you ask is: "Is logic a given?" or "a product of language and culture"? This is really two questions, because what is "a given" is in Kantian terms 'a priori' truth, whereas what evolves in language and culture is a standard of universal acceptance (endexos?). My answer is that relational existence is a subsistent system whose fundamental properties are universally relaible and consistent. This MUST BE TRUE; otherwise, existence would be chaotic and civilization would be impossible. But this does not mean that logical order is a priori to the natural world. For the essentialist, it means that symmetry and order are indigenous to Essential Value from which all experience is derived.
As value-sensible observers, we (intellectually) project order into the objective reality that our experience creates. In other words, logic, numerality, and cogency are valuistic precepts of the cognizant subject which are imparted to the objective world. They are 'a priori' to value awareness, not to objectivized reality. Because we are all (pre-intellectually) aware of the same essential value, there is a universal ground for experience. The difference between your worldview and mine is not an essential difference but a conditional one. Our subjective cognizance of this space/time universe is shared in common: there is general agreement about its logical design, dynamics and finite attributes, even though the values experienced are determined by our individual sensibilities.
I think you and I agree on the big things on this matter, it's the details, and that is to be expected.
Right, and "the details" of differentiation are next on my agenda - when you are ready, of course. Again, thanks for your patience and understanding. (I'm having a similar dialogue with Zenith (off-line), and it's a question of which of you will bow out first.)
Incidentally, I was disappointed to discover that Jennifer Tanabe, whose fine essay on value perception you found for me, is a writer for the Rev. Moon's Unification Church. This rules out any hope I had that Tannabe might relate value to an essential source.
Essentially yours, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
