dmb says: I already explained how the experiment serves as an example of my claims in a separate post but let me take up the issue of "special treatment". If equal footing means that we ought not privilege one kind of experience over another then I agree. Dewey and James say a confusing, chaotic experience is just as "real" as any other experience. It really was confusing, it really was chaotic. It doesn't have to be intellectually meaningful or cognitively accurate to be a real experience. And you can see Pirsig in this insofar as confusing and chaotic are qualities of experience. In their own terms, they're saying quality is real too.
[Krimel] As I have said many times before I don't think James was calling pure experience a unity. I don't think "experience" of any kind is a unity. But I would say that this is a researchable and answerable question. It is wrong I would say, to specify that the reality, the world, or our experience of it has to be a particular way. What sets science and empiricism a part from dogma and rationalism is that they do not make statements. They ask questions. [dmb] But the "special treatment" issue involves the disciplined intellectual examination of mysticism. More specifically, we want to know what kind of scientific techniques are appropriate for exploring this category of experience, right? [Krimel] Right [dmb] The methods developed in the physical sciences work well for studying physical phenomena, but look what happens when those tools are used to study mystical experience? You get data about brain states, the physical phenomena that are associated with the experience but never get at the experience as such. [Krimel] But that is the point, wouldn't you say. The sharing of an experience, "as such", is always imperfect. We communicate by encoding our individual experience symbolically is such a way that another can decode it meaningfully and have a similar experience or gain some insight into our experience. What science attempts to do is formalize and to remove noise from the process. Or if you prefer science is the pursuit of unambiguous metaphors. [dmb] This is not a request for special treatment so much as the appropriate tools. You want to inquire into the experience itself, compare first-hand reports and such. I mean, the people gathering the data should be mystics. They should know a lot about what it like to be in these states, how to achieve them, how to describe them afterward in scholarly way. I can see how the brain state data could serve a role within a larger context, how they could be part of the team. That's what I mean by "epistemological pluralism". The methods and criteria for validity have to be adapted to the object of study. There are broad categories, of course, so you don't need to start a new science every day. We can see the outlines of this in the division between the sciences and the humanities, between physics and biology, between history and poetry. These disciplines are defined by their various methods almost as much as their content. And I think we could put all these into the four levels of the MOQ and basically get four different groups of methods and tools. Be nice is somebody worked that out in a formal way someday but its probably too big to see all at once. [Krimel] The fact that different areas of study use different methods is a point that I think David M would say is highlighted by Dupree in the "Disorder of Things." I think he has a valid point but overstates it. For example, surely the methods of physics and history are very different. But my own inclination is to see the similarly in structure and function between the disciplines and to call that science. It is the pattern of inquiry and the pattern of the goals that are critical to me. I see those patterns in the "t"ruth, intellectual honesty, agreement on the nature of evidence and so forth. I do have a postmodernist streak. What I see in looking at the similarity of and difference between disciplines is the fractal, self similarity of patterns. Knowledge has a certain structure that Pirsig describes very well in his discussion of the slips of paper that guided his thinking and resulted from it. In outline form this structure looks like broccoli. As I noted in my previous post I think the research criteria you would like was actually present in the study I cited. I would like to comment on your idea of have the subjects of any research study be involved in the design of the study and the analysis of the result. It's a really bad idea. People no matter how well trained are notoriously bad about interpreting their own experiences. The effects of experimenter bias are exactly the kinds of 'values' science rightly tries to avoid. As both experimenter and subject these biases would be likely to have a huge effect on the outcome of the study. I can think of a couple of examples where the approach you favor has been tried with not so good results. The first were the structuralists who at about the time of William James sought to use introspective methods to identify units of thought and to construct a vocabulary that would allow us to perhaps describe the color red in a way a blind person could understand. They failed miserably and had little show for their efforts but long stream of consciousness narratives where blue felt oily... More recent examples might include John Lilly who experimented with sensory deprivation, LSD and dolphins. He sometimes used himself as a subject and sometimes did research incorporating all three of his areas of interest. Lilly is fun to read but not very credible in the later stages of his research. I think Leary may have also used himself as a subject but frankly the fact that he did wound up detracting from the value of his earlier work where he did not. dmb says: I think the phrase is "primary empirical reality". This is not a title that grants a privileged status, it is a descriptive term and its not especially flattering either. It is primary in the sense of being the first and most basic, like a primary culture, which they used to call a "primitive" culture. It is the immediately felt quality of the situation. I believe this claim is made of the basis of phenomenological observation, that is to say by paying very careful attention to experience. [Krimel] Although I don't think anything in nature presents itself as self evident. I would say that the claim that sensory experience precedes all others is pretty darn close. I would say the immediate felt quality that you describe results from sensory experience and the synthesis of multimodal experience into a unity. I would heartily agree that this is a non-conscious process influenced by our previous experience and shaped by our culture. But the multimodal quality of per-intellectual experience conforms to what I personally know phenomenologically, mystically, and intellectually. I think James would agree with this. I really don't understand your insistence on the fundamental unity of "primary empirical reality". What difference does it make to you if this unity begins in sensation or results from perception? This is just my impression but you seem to have elevated this assumption to the level of dogma. You say it has to be understood in this way. Why? I suspect that even within the perennial philosophy there is not universal agreement on this point. [dmb] I like "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" better. That phrase conjures up a melted version of Fantasia, a liquid reality. But the moral code surely gives status to the dynamic and I don't disagree with the assertion that the MOQ is a mystical monism above all. The mystic is one who can surf on that immediate quality and act spontaneously, but the primary empirical reality is always already there for everybody whether they have tin ears or not. [Krimel] This phrase "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" gets tossed around in the MoQ a lot but it doesn't really make much sense. If it is undifferentiated how can it be a continuum? Does not continuum imply continuity between this and that? I mean ,is it undifferentiated because it has smooth transitions? Don't differentiation and continuation depend on the level of analysis or the lack of analysis? Sure, it sounds good. But when you mix all the crayons in the box together what you get is the "yucko" color. Surfing reality and acting spontaneously are not exclusive to mystics or those with perfect pitch. It is the fate of man. dmb says: I'm not blaming scientists. In fact the problem is the metaphysical assumptions that all Modern Western people have inherited. Its just that scientists are not immune to it and the common inheritance is a scientific worldview. Abuse is a separate issue. The problem is not the bad uses of knowledge. It is the basis of knowledge. There is certainly nothing in the MOQ that would threaten science, honesty or the pursuit of knowledge. If you have friends who've come out against these causes, get new friends. [Krimel] Could you be specific about which evil metaphysical assumption you think infect the west. One of the reasons I discount all of the prattle about SOM is because I don't think it makes any sense at all. The dualism, the discontinuity, the either or assumptions just haven't been part of my thinking since the '70s. I do not think "objectivity" refers to "things" in isolation existing in and of themselves as TiTs. I think it refers to the consensus achievable by multiple observers. It is the overlap of experience that is only possible when two or more gather in its name. Without the presence of another mind, objectivity is not possible. Objectivity is not given. It is negotiated. Often it seems to me you are fighting a fight that was over 20 years ago rather like one of those Japanese soldiers that used to turn up on isolated Pacific islands in the '60s still fighting WWII. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
