[Ham, previously]:
Yes, Sensibility is a noun, just as Quality is a noun.
If you must speak "categorically", Subjective Sensibility is
a category. But it is not a "set of relationships." It is the
unit of awareness that identifies the individual Knower.
[Krimel]:
Right this is the point where we either misunderstand
each other or flat out disagree. The Self is not a thing.
It is not Quality either. The Self is a process or to be
strictly grammatical it is a verb. It does not fall into the
category of things that are discrete. It is not a "unit."
I might be persuaded that it is not a set of relationships
but it certainly is what emerges from a set of relationships.
Okay, let's try to resolve the disagreement. Epistemology is a tricky
subject to communicate, yet the concept is quite simple if we understand
that the Self cannot be defined empirically. Selfness (the "psyche") is the
non-physical locus of awareness, and I have never regarded the Self as
Quality or a thing. The Self is what senses and apprehends its existential
identity. (I use "sensibility" and "awareness" in the general sense of
"knower" or "apprehender", and I reserve "sensation" for proprioceptive
feelings associated with trauma, pain, hunger, and the five organic senses.)
[Ham]:
What do you call the part of self that is not a body?
If each of us produces a body, then this "non-body part"
is accountable (for producing it). This is what I call the Self.
It is the "awareness" contingent of being-aware.
[Krimel]:
I guess I would call the part of the self that is non-body,
the environment. The Mind part of the Mind/Body that
arises from the interaction of body and environment.
By making the psyche environmental you reduce it to the objective world, a
category of "thingness". Here we do disagree. You have adamantly rejected
the notion of Self as a thing, as do I. What, then, is the "environment"
from which it is derived? And is this environment what you regard as
universal, as in "the collective intellect"?
[Krimel]:
Ok first if "Sensation IS value sensibility" then why not
drop the pretentiousness and use the English term?
I stated above that "sensation" is a subcategory of sensibility, and you
know that sensibility means value-sensibility to me. So what term do you
find "pretentious"? (I'll use "awareness" if it simplifies things for
you.)
Damasio makes a distinction between the physiology of
emotion of the feeling of emotion and I was put off by that
until he explained with a concrete example. A man had a
stroke that damaged an area of the brain that included
the emotional pathways between the limbic system and
the cortex. The man now displays many of the outward
signs of emotional communication: smiling, frowning etc.
but he does not experience the emotion. In other words the
physiology of emotion is present but not the experience of
emotion. ...
And which do you think qualifies as "emotion"? The exhibited body movements
or the feeling? You see, this is not meaningless rhetoric. Either you
accept emotional feeling as proprietary awareness or you don't. You can say
that a dog is in pain if it lowers its head, shudders and groans. But
that's exhibited behavior, not the feeling of pain. Or, do you deny that
pain is a feeling? Evidently Pirsig didn't, as he uses it in an analogy for
value experience. Sensibility (awareness) has a very specific connotation
in epistemology and philosophy. Equivocation on its meaning only fudges the
issue of Selfness.
Experience is a complex process that involves all kinds
of feedback loops between the body and the environment
and within the body to a variety of sensory and motor
systems. If you want the really simple stripped down
version: the system that is "me" is basically an array of inputs
(sensation) and a series of outputs (motor functions). ...
It all comes down to the fundamental concept of the subjective Self. Do you
accept it or not? Is what you feel and apprehend unique to you or is it an
integral part of the objective universe that surrounds you?
The Self has lots and lots of processes. Only some of them
become part of conscious awareness. Intellectual functions
are the distinctly human parts of conscious awareness. They
involve the slurring of time and expanded access to memory
but they are generally filtered through the linguistic centers
which are highly specialized.
What I call the Self is not the metabolic, digestive, respirational, or
endocrinal processes that go on in my body. Self is ALL conscious. It is
what I am aware of now and as an observer of my passing experience.
Linguistic processing is irrelevant to this issue.
Of course we cannot have each other's conscious awareness.
We share experiences by encoding our personal experience
into language and decoding the experiences of others from
language. Language works because there is overlap. It exploits
the commonality between your experience and mine.
Human commonality by communication is not awareness but behavior that adapts
to relations. You are evading the central issue, Krimel. All this talk
about process and language as "decoded experience" is an attempt to justify
the Self as a collective function of nature. I believe in the integrity of
selfness, not its distribution throughout the universe. Why not admit
either that you don't accept the individuality of the Self or that you are
persuaded by the MoQ to deny subjectivity?
Until or unless we can "agree to disagree" on that issue, it is useless to
pursue this line of discussion.
--Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Krimel]
If you insist on using your terms, then Self does not invent
values, but values invent the Self.
[Ham]
As I define the Self as value-sensibility, I can understand how values
might
be conceived to "actualize" selfness. However, it's inconsistent with the
epistemology of Essentialism. Not that you particularly care, but I
consider Sensibility primary to value realization.
[Krimel]
You are right I have nothing vested in preserving Essentialism. In fact I
think the sooner you move past it the better. But to do that you have to
realize that your investment in it is emotional not intellectual.
[Ham]
Value doesn't "realize"; it simply represents what is beyond sensibility.
I like to think of it as desire's "referent". Socrates described desire
as what man wants and does not possess: "...what he neither has nor
> himself is--that which he lacks--this is what he wants and desires."
If Socrates was right, then the object of desire, the thing wanted,
is the desire's value. In the differentiated world of existence, we
yearn for value and experience it in passing things and events.
But pure (metaphysical) Sensibility needs no object; Value is
already and immutably its undivided Essence. That's why in my
ontogeny Sensibility is negated from Essence to create the entity
Being-Aware. Since the individuated self is incapable of sensing
Essence directly, it experiences the Source as the value of otherness.
[Krimel]
I have nothing to say about this other than it is an example of how you
are
making up a lot of terms and arguments to support your desire to make
your 'philosophy' work. Unfortunately it is stated in terms that make
> evaluation problematic.
Just one example: Sensation is the encoding of physical energy in neural
impulses. It cannot occur is there is nothing out there to encode or if
there is no physical organs to do the encoding. Sensation is not a
metaphysical concept it is a process.
[Ham]
I think this discussion has been both productive and amiable. Are you as
pleased that we are fundamentally in accord as I am? Or is it more fun to
quibble over terminology and accuse me of conjuring up "fantasies"?
[Krimel]
I think the degree of accord is pretty small, but yeah at least it is
detectable. I still find your understanding flawed and your terminology
obscure.
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