The fact that experience refers to something past does not mean it could not have resulted from a process of discovery. It just means the process could not have targeted that experience in its full knowlege of what it would be (in fact it may not have targeted it at all). So yes, people can discover new experiences for themselves.
On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 9:23 PM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > Can one discover his or her new experiences? No, because one only has > experiences; strictly speaking, one cannot discover what one already has > experienced. This little nicety of logic is also why the aphorisms are > not very > good philosophy. Witty aphorisms may serve the purpose of calling > attention to a > worthy concept but do little more. To mention discovery in connection with > experience begs a close definition of each term in a specific context. > That's > where philosophy and linguistics rightly come into play. Furthermore, it's > always annoying when authors make summative trivializing remarks about > others, > as if those other folks too shallow and stupid to reflect on their own > experiences. Only notable people can get by with aphorisms because the > aphorisms rely on their reputations alone; other validations are excused. > > Probably the best quoter of aphorisms and little lessons from the ancients > was > Montaigne. Yet even he only used quotations to supplement --ornament -- > his own > close arguments and never as stand-alone appeals. A hundred years ago it > was a > kind of parlor game to converse in quotations from the ancients or notable > contemporaries. I call that the Bartlett approach to discourse. Nowadays > Bartlett's pretty much out of favor because few people read the ancients > or know > much of anything of what used to be called 'letters'. The old fashioned > Bartlett's' Quotation approach to discourse is surely one tradition we can > do > without. Yes, you may quote me on that because I'm listed in the various > Who's > Who (America, Art, World, blah, blah) and thus qualify as an aphorist. > wc > > > When you speak of discovery, do you mean the discovery of new experiences?: > > - No one is so eager to gain new experience as he who doesn't know how to > make use of the old ones. > > Marie EbnervonEschenbach
