Hi Mark --
Cheers Ham,
Thanks for the attribute of elegance, but I think you miss my point.
More my fault than anything. But, these discussions do allow
elaboration. If you meant to trivialize the analogy by comparing it
to a computer network, that is fine. But, it is much more than that.
Perhaps it doesn't fit into a Ham box, but let me try again. I am
arguing against emergence, I believe the emergence theory is yours.
But, as you suggest, I will not delve into Essence.
I in no way am circumventing the cognitive agent of awareness
as you call it. In fact, I am speaking directly to it. This agent is at
the heart of what I am trying to convey to you. I will use some
analogies from child psychology to perhaps explain it a different way.
...When a child is born, it has no concept of other. In fact it cannot
distinguish itself from its mother for awhile. When a child is born,
all it has is Will. This then becomes more All Self and No Other.
What this means is that during the early stages of development,
a human has NO SOM. I'll spare you the other stages.
There are people, labeled as autistic (for lack of a better term)
who are capable of living part time in an autistic world of pure
sense, and then capable of communicating with the rest of us
as to what that type of consciousness is like in our own logical
terms. Now, I don't want to seem kind of fringe on this kind of thing.
If you are interested in the applications of SOM and Quality to
autism, then I suggest you read Autism: The Lost Art of Sensing
by Donna Williams.
Mark, if the "emergence theory" belongs to anybody it is Robert M. Pirsig.
I certainly haven't fostered it. Your analysis of SOM awakening is
interesting, although I am not qualified to pass judgment on it. What you
call "will" is closer to what I've heard psychologists identify as "libido".
Whether it's instinctive in humans (and thus of biological origin), or the
"intent" component of human consciousness, I'm not prepared to say.
Actually, I doubt that the psychologists are, either.
I may look into Williams' 'Lost Art of Sensing', as I feel studies on autism
can shed some light on normal "associative" development. My son was
diagnosed as having ADHD in mid-life, and my wife thinks I exhibit some of
his symptoms. However, I don't believe "living part time in a world of pure
sense" characterizes this malady as much as what I would call solipsistic
behavior.
One of the problems I face in presenting the concepts of Essentialism to new
people is determining precisely what they need to know. If I say too much,
I am challenged on logical or dialectical grounds; if I don't say enough,
it's the lack of understanding that hampers communication. Getting involved
in the details of evolutionary history, quantum physics, or psychological
anomalies tends to serve as a distraction rather than an aid to
understanding the fundamentals.
Suffice it to say that words do improve memory so that
if you attach some awareness to a word, it is easier to recall
that awareness through this word. It is sometimes proposed
that we think in words. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
It is only words when communication is involved, it is only
SOM when words are involved. Most of our consciousness
is wordless.
Here I agree with you completely. I have never subscribed to semiotic
theories of knowledge, which is part of the reason I have resisted the
Pirsigian theory of the socially-derived intellect. People who live on
desert islands are no less intelligent that those of us who benefit from
social acculturation. Nor do I believe that intellectual capability
(intellection) originated with the ancient Greeks.
You provide vague notions of this cognitive agent of awareness
by wrapping it in cosmic separation from something else. Sure,
water becomes gas when it gets hot, and thus separates, but
how does such a notion create cognitive awareness? You are
missing a lot of pieces in between. I would be more than happy
to have you present to me how personal consciousness arises.
The development of self-awareness is too complex a subject to chronicle in a
posted message. There's a brief outline of the origin of consciousness in
an essay I put together for my website. (You can access it at
www.essentialism.net/becomeaware.net.) In a nutshell, I liken its emergence
to a particular "difference" or change in the holistic sensibility of the
fetus -- the sudden feeling of localized pain or discomfort, for example.
This initiates a process of "intellectual negation" in which the disturbance
or interruption is identified as different from the placid state of uterine
self-awareness. As each new experience is presented to the infant it
becomes recognized as a specific "other", to be named later in its
post-partum environment, along with observed phenomena which are
intellectualized as "beings" external to the self.
So, I have no intention of disinheriting the subjective sense,
in fact I am embracing it. It is your pseudo logical
encapsulation of this sense into an ineffable construct
which creates the disinheritance. What I see so far is
much hand-waving.
I hope the above notes translate as something more than hand-waving,
although I went through some hand-writhing before posting them to you.
Again, I also hope we don't allows ourselves to get lost in the details.
Cheers back to you, Mark
Ham
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