Hi Willblake --
Thank you for your response. We may or may not be speaking the same language.
Thus far I fear we are not.
I have been living with Taoism for over 35 years, I stopped searching a long time ago, as there is not much to search for, it's pretty simple. I am not looking for a manifestation (unless you claim such a thing), I was trying to understand how you saw Value, and gave you some options to respond to which was my understanding of what I had read of yours. When you speak of essence, you are a little closer to my views of this existence.
To understand my ontology, you must first separate Existence from Essence. We don't experience reality "essentially"; we experience it differentially. Essence is undifferentiated, uncreated, and has no "other". Conversely, individuals (subjects) are separated from beingness (objects) and objects are divided from each other. This establishes a free agent that brings Value into the world by actualizing it as the phenomena of "otherness" (things and events in space/time).
I get confused when I hear Value or Quality or even "value sensibility", because it seems to imply there are different levels of it (good and bad, for example). That is why I ask whether you are following some kind of guidance through this Value concept, creating personal value for example.
Good and bad, right and wrong, are not "levels". They are relative labels we apply to the range of value sensibility, sometimes misleadingly referred to as "the aesthetic continuum". I regard all value as "personal" (i.e., proprietary to the individual). "What is good and what is not good, Phaedrus" but that we make it so? Sensibility is our "guide", and it will vary from person to person. (As you can see, I am a moral relativist.)
Maybe a better way to understand your belief system is to ask: are you striving to improve (or better appreciate, as you put it) your life through Value selection?
Aren't we all?
If so, what are the guiding principles you follow, is it sensory? If not, then how does this concept enter into your behavior? Oh, and when I say preference, I am not alluding to a human choosing preference, just something with direction, like gravity for example. Intelligence is overrated.
Man is endowed with two unique capacities: Value sensibility and reason. Morality is a human convention, not a natural law or principle like gravity or the conservation of energy. Nothing "out there in the cosmos" is going to guide us to "betterness". Only man has the freedom to choose his own values. If you need a moral axiom, try "rational, self-directed value."
I hope my response hasn't discouraged you. 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/
