Krimel said to dmb:
My disappointment stemmed largely from the length of the quotation but
primarily from its irrelevance to the point at hand. You brought it up to
address this statement: "No where is James saying that physical substance does
not give rise to mental events." It simply does not.
dmb says:
You shouldn't delete quotes being debated unless your aim to is hide and
obscure. Besides, I can simply dig it up and re-post it. Here is a paragraph
from the paper I quoted (by Taylor & Wozniak). The phrase "physical substance"
isn't used here but notice what James wishes to get rid of ("this substantial
dualism") and what he hopes to replace it with (a "monism of pure experience").
He is denying that there is an entity called consciousness (the subjective
self) and he is denying that there "material objects". He says the "primal
stufff or material in the world" is not matter but rather "pure experience".
To deny the existence of "consciousness" is not, for James, to deny the
existence of thoughts, but "to deny that the word ['consciousness'] stands for
an entity," to deny that there is any "aboriginal stuff or quality of being,
contrasted with that of which our material objects are made, out of which our
thoughts of them are made."[19] In place of this substantial dualism, James
proposes what might best be called a radically pluralistic monism of pure
experience. There is, he says, "only one primal stuff or material in the world,
a stuff of which everything is composed, and...we call that stuff ' pure
experience.'" For James, in other words, all that which exists is pure
experience and pure experience is all that exists. In contrast to the dualism
of consciousness and content, in other words, James argues for a monism of pure
experience.[20]
Krimel said:
James is not saying that there is some kind of unitary form of pure experience.
Nor is he advocating a monism of the sort you seem partial toward. He is saying
that experience is plural.
dmb says:
Look at that quote from Taylor and Wozniak again - for the third time. They say
(just in the quoted paragraph) that James "proposes what might best be called a
radically pluralistic monism" and "argues for a monism of pure experience".
James is most certainly advocating a monism and it is not at odds with his
pluralism. Pirsig does the same sort of thing without contradiction. Quality is
his monism, the static-dynamic distinction is the MOQ's dualism and the levels
are its pluralism. Your willingness to dispute statements that are right in
front of you is a bit astonishing. Are you pulling my leg here or what?
You can check the Stanford encyclopedia too. Their article on James says he
"set out the metaphysical view most commonly known as 'neutral monism',
according to which there is one fundamental 'stuff' that is neither material
nor mental". As James himself explains it in "A World of Pure Experience", this
primary empirical reality is "experience in its 'pure' state, plain unqualified
actuality, a simple THAT, as yet undifferentiated into thing and thought, and
only virtually classifiable as objective fact or as someone's opinion"
Krimel said:
Radical empiricism at least as James expresses it most assuredly does not say
that reality and experience are the same thing.
dmb says:
Again, in "A World of Pure Experience" James says, "Should we not say here that
to be experienced as continuous is to be really continuous, in a world where
experience and reality come to the same thing?". This notion is also consistent
with the basic demands of his radical empiricism, which says that philosophers
should include every kind of experience in their accounts of reality and that
they shouldn't add anything that is NOT experienced.
Krimel said:
Reductionism as such is one of the most lasting and profoundly productive tools
of science and math. It consists of breaking big problems into smaller ones.
What's the problem?
dmb says:
As I already said, the problem arises when the "big problem" is made to
disappear by breaking it down into "smaller ones". This problem occurs when it
is used to dismiss mystical experience as a brain fart, for example. Looking at
what occurs in the organs simply can't address the meaning or validity of the
experience. It assumes in advance, for metaphysical rather than scientific or
empirical reasons, that such experiences are meaningless epiphenomenon. Again,
I'm not saying that we should ignore brains or that science is no good. But
scientism and reductionism proceed from and reinforce the very assumptions that
Pirsig and James are attacking. It is based on dogma, not empirical evidence.
It is a way of interpreting the data as if everything in reality was ultimately
and ontologically physical, whereas Pirsig and James are saying that experience
is only "virtually classifiable" as "physical" or "mental". Or, to put it very
simply, there are many cases in which the complex p
henomenon can't be reduced to smaller problems without altogether losing the
phenomenon being studied. Where in the brain do we find morals or values, for
example? Reductionism dismisses or ignores or can't handle a wide range of
experience, which means a wide range of reality. But you don't have to take my
word for it. Ask Mr. Google to show you some papers on antireductionism. You'll
find that the objections mostly arise when reductionism is applied to
phenomenon that are significantly more complex than numbers or cells. It
becomes a problem in areas such as history, philosophy, religion, sociology,
etc..
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