>Jim here:  It seems to me that the statement, "Soft fluffy clouds are
>cumulus, stratus, but not cirrus . . . clouds" represents a true
>"value-judgment," in the *least* pejorative sense of that oft- maligned
>phrase.  Can I ask you why is a cirrus cloud *not* soft? and why is a
>cirrus cloud *not* fluffy? 

Only in a 'comparative' and 'relational' sense are cirrus not soft and
fluffy because of their apparent 'texture' and 'contexture' within the
cumulus-stratus-order. They appear to Humans as wisps, horse tails, and
'curli-que-esque' analogous to Curly and Moe. As a backdrop in the sky the
cirrus are 'brushstrokes' against the presence of the stratus clouds which
resemble cotton balls.  

 These seem to me to be subjective aesthetic
>assessments, and not scientific statements.

Truly subjective data cannot be discussed intersubjectively except by the
use of indirect referential language. God is one such term since God is an
idea living in the unconscious. Nowhere can God be located (deus
absconditus) but God can have an idea that surfaces from time to time in the
conscious as a representation, vision, etc. The only way to communicate a
mystical God (enigmatica mystica) is to embellish the idea with appearances
by freeing the contents of the unconscious. The presentation of the Divine
thus is pure feeling, a pure feeling of awe (both terrible and wonderful at
the same time). 

On the other hand God can be presented by an ecclesiastical authority in the
form of a nascent church as the suumum bonnum (ultimate good) (let Christ
carry your cross) (if you carry your own to the Calvary - beware for the
mortification of the flesh is at hand) (I am a Catholic boy/ saved through
pain/ not through joy. Jim Carroll) but as I mentioned earlier, God created
the devil before he created man on the second day of creation. The wrath of
God thus may be experienced as evil, thus God is not simply the idea of
perfect good. 

Valuation (feeling) is thus a first actuality of the soul in one sense due
to the 'contact sense' supplying feeling (value) which is what we as
embodied souls first experience when we come into direct contact with an
another entity (mother). Mostly that primordial experience would supply some
'formative cognition' about the form of the ambient we are present in
(animal values) and which are much like instincts (bundles of primitive
emotions).  The contact sense is said to supply form, but the inner
representation is subjective feeling, or content/meaning in a relational
sense. If it may be stated with any certainty there are three intentional
senses primordially in consciousness: the relational, the contact, and the
meaning sense, roughly corresponding to a continuum of sensibilities
postulated in the objective-subjective antithesis. Valuation thus is a
process oriented function (before and after) experience, and is therefore an
intermediary of four qualities: sense data, rational thought, intuition, and
feeling. Take two twist ties and cross them over and make a cross. The
opposites (same and different) correspond to emotion and cognition of one
tie, the other tie is the opposites of indivisible and divisible. The union
of divisible and indivisible are Beings, the union of indivisible and
different is the mean, and union of different and same is Natures and the
Third Form is the union of divisible and same. 

Thomas Taylor influenced by Plato (Timaeus) says "[F]or those which are
connected to her essence in a following order, proceed from her (the anima
mundi) [world soul] according to the power of the fourth term (4) which
possess generative powers; but return to her according to the fifth which
reduces them to one."

These comment is analogous to the idea of autopoeisis since it is only
through feeling that a sentient entity can reproduce/regenerate in a strict
pleasure-response model of reality. Thus all creation is in process through
admission into a union of opposites of categorial ontological sense of
becoming. In fact the metaphor for sin  and eternal death is 'enstasis' in
ancient Greek cosmologies and psychological theories. Enstasis is a being
which does not change, has no motion, nor animation. Stillness is a metaphor
for death in ancient Greece. So the term autopoeisis refers to a volitional
phase of human conscious where the plastitude of the gods where maleable if
they were remembered and honoured and celebrated. Thus only the poets could
communicate and ask the Gods to intervene in human affairs.

The four elements are said to represent Forms and "...their union in a
quincunx signifies union of the four elements in a world-body." 

Ambients and environs. 

The difference between ambient and environment is more detailed since an
ambient is the medium of life-in-process (process oriented function)
emphasizing continuous-phase type behaviours; the ambient is the medium of
the contact-sense and includes all kinds of media, whereas the environment
is more adjectival in meaning (attribute of the psychic world, symbolic
life-world), that succeeds through moments (eigenblincks). The environment
is not an ambient but more symbolically interpretated as that which is
communicated through the medium and the medium is not important I think. 

Environmentalists are like frogs except in one sense. The environmentally
conscious frogs do not stay in the water if the water heats up. They can
detect subtle temperature rises and thus are senstive to the medium
symbolically. Less sensitive (common ones) frogs stay in the water as the
water becomes more and more hot until they cannot leap out due to
incapacity. The environmentalist frogs can interpret signs, incremental
changes in the environment symbolically, whereas the ambient dominated frogs
stay because they simply like warm water even if they cannot interpret the
rise in temperature early enough as it become more risky to stay (it feels
to good to get out). 

I don't know where I gathered this information, perhaps in a cloud of
unknowning. 
>
>Perhaps you could clarify your meaning here, oh fluffmeister.
>
>Jim, seeking the Truth
"In Arizona I remember soft fluffy clouds catching colors reflected
everywhere. Long narrow clouds trailing off into the horizons."



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