[Ham] 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.) [Krimel] Right there, you have identified what we are just not going to agree about. You think there this non-physical something or other and you need to explain it. I think it is a fantasy and have no problem explaining it as a wishful thinking. I think the self is a perfectly natural thing that arises out of biology and develops according to its interaction with the environment that it finds itself in. There is no need to invoke the non-physical or the supernatural and frankly invoking them does not make for a clearer understanding. As I see it is just opens a Pandora's box of other stuff that needs to be explained. After all we would need to find a way to explain all of the "supernatural" laws because if there aren't any then I don't see any difference between "supernatural" and chaos. Oh except that we can make a lot of sense out of chaos and none from the supernatural. [Ham] 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] Well, I don't see where this reduces anything to anything but I do tend to see lots and lots of processes and almost nothing that is just a thing all on its own. The "environment" is background. Experience is foreground. I think the intellectual level is a collection of ideas and thoughts that have been accumulating since people have been expressing them. That collection of ideas exists, encoded in individual minds and in books and in a host of newly discovered techniques for encoding and decoding them. Those "ideas" have no existence or meaning other than what individual minds detect in them. But each individual mind can dip into that pool of ideas and extract meaning from it. That is what a culture is. [Ham] 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.) [Krimel] I find all of the terms you make up pretentious. They provide an illusion of clarity without actually make any sense. I think it comes from your insistence that philosophy is just the making of definitions and arranging them into patterns that feel good. [Ham] 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. [Krimel] I have always assumed that what you mean by proprietary awareness is unique to the individual. I have explained how I think this happens several times in the past couple of days. The issue you are asking about is similar to what Willblake2 is getting at. There is a rich literature on this and as I have said I tend to side with Searle and Dennett. Consciousness is an emergent process of the Mind/Body. [Ham] 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? [Krimel] "I" am an integral process, a Mind/Body, that emerges from the environment. But "I" am a unique process. [Ham] 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. [Krimel] Consciousness cannot exist in the absence of metabolism. Even I don't think this is a satisfactory explanation and haven't claimed that it is. But to pretend that consciousness exists in the absence of metabolism is something you would have to be an Aw Gi to buy into. I am not in the camp that holds that language is all that and a bag of chips but I do not underestimate its importance and I certainly don't think it is irrelevant. [Ham] 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? [Krimel] I am not evading anything. I think the Self is a Mind/Body. As I have told you before it is the current instantiation of a process, a fire that has been burning on this planet for 4.5 billion years. I certainly do not think that I am an unnatural process and definitely not a supernatural one. [Ham] Until or unless we can "agree to disagree" on that issue, it is useless to pursue this line of discussion. [Krimel] I agree that we disagree. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ >> [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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