Krimel said: Experiences is the "cause" of "things"? ... I think your claim that, "experience is the cause and things are the effect" is misguided. What Pirsig says is this: "By this he (James) meant that subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.'" James says the we derive subjects and objects from our experience, not that experience creates them. He also says we derive this from reflection on our experiences and that sometimes in our deriving we see ourselves as subject and sometimes as object. The same can be said of inanimate objects. Many here would like to see photons as subjects for example. The point is that experience doesn't happen and subjects and objects are not derived in a vacuum. They occur within entities capable of making distinctions.
dmb says: You really don't see how illogical this is? Do you really think it makes sense to say that subjects are derived from subjects? Do you really imagine that it is NOT completely preposterous to insist that experience begins within entities that are derived from that experience? Pirsig and James assert "that subjects and objects are NOT the starting points of experience". They are secondary, they are "concepts derived from something more fundamental". But you just keep repeating the very assumption they are rejecting here. You keep insisting that subjects and objects MUST be the starting points of experience, that experience can only "occur within entities capable of making distinctions". It just has to be subjective experience of an objective reality, you say, because they are "not derived in a vacuum". Clearly, you find it impossible to imagine experience in terms other than SOM, but you should at least be able to see that this is at odds with what Pirsig and James are saying. You should at least be able to check the logic in the statements you've made and see how that doesn't even come close to working. I mean, isn't it obviously wrong to say that subjects are secondary because they're derived from subjects? That's like saying you are your own son. Such a notion might work in a funny little song or down at the comedy club but, logically and philosophically speaking, its pure nonsense. [Krimel] Nice dodging the actual issues. Clear restatement of your own misconceptions. Subjects and objects as James and Pirsig frame them are categories of thought derived from experience. James' thinking on this is a bit clearer than Pirsig's and what he says is that sometimes we experience ourselves as subject and sometimes as object. Sometimes we see events external to us as objects and sometimes we identify with them as subjects. We employ that evolutionary empathy you seem so keen on. We are in fact neither or both. But don't you see how obviously wrong it is to claim that experience occurs without a locus of experience? How that locus of experience classifies itself is what James is talking about. I am not saying that subjects and objects are starting points at all. One might have experiences in which one is neither subject nor object. At the theater, engaged in my meditative practice, I do not experience myself at all I experience the film. I am neither subject nor object I am merely a locus of the experience. When you say, "I mean, isn't it obviously wrong to say that subjects are secondary because they're derived from subjects?" you are not thinking very deeply or at very high altitude to mix metaphors. I am not a subject or an object. Those categories are not inherent in me they arise from my own attempts to make sense of any given experience in its own context. That is in fact how the concepts are "derived". The issues you fail to address are at the heart of your own logical absurdity. You have experience as a fundamental thing or process or whatever, existing without time space or locus. You have it in the same position of creator that Ham places essence. It is as I said, just theology swept in the back door. 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/
