dmb says: Your objection to this particular use of the term is laughable. Pirsig is not claiming that the city of Los Angeles recognizes the fact that it is shaking. It's just one of the ways people use the word, as in "the earth periodically experiences ice ages" or "the city experienced a period of growth". What's fallacious is taking this as a claim about the consciousness awareness of a planet or a city. Your silly correction, that only the people of L.A. experience the earthquake, only shows that you are insisting on one narrow conception of the idea, one which fits SOM, which is "experience" in Pirsig's second definition. Since you always insist on that definition and that is the definition the MOQ's seeks to alter, you have trouble interpreting what's being said. Objects don't have experiences, you say, only subjects do. But this is just a re-assertion of SOM. You're merely presenting the very problem that Pirsig is trying to get rid of. You're rejecting the antidote in favor of the poison.
[Krimel] Well, just to review. The animals living during periods of glaciations experienced the ice ages and the people living in a city experience its growth. What you seem to be defending is something along the line of Dennett's intentional stance. I'm all for that. Personification simplifies basic communication. It is a useful act of metaphor. However, when you start talking in a philosophical sense about levels warring with each other and asserting that it is proper to talk about iron filings having a preference, you have crossed a line. That is not just simplification or metaphorical usage, it is building an argument based on a fallacy. [dmb] As you should be able to see here, Pirsig is well aware of the definition of "experience" that you're insisting upon but he's also contrasting that meaning with a larger one. [Krimel] What larger meaning? Subject/Object metaphysics is as far as I can tell something made up entirely by Pirsig. It is a particular characterization on Descartes' Mind/Body problem. In many cases Pirsig's platypi arise not from any widely held set of assumptions but from his particular phrasing of the mind/body problem. As Descartes framed this duality, there are two kinds of substance, mental and physical. He actually thought that the brain transduced physical substance into mental substance via the pineal gland. When Pirsig says in the annotation, "...Subjects and objects are intellectual terms referring to matter and nonmatter." It is a statement loaded with problems. First and I can't stress this enough, to make the term subject plural is to misunderstand the problem completely. There cannot be multiple subjects. "I" am the only subject in "my" experience. I make inferences about the nature of others but I can never experience them as subjects they are always and forever objects in "my" experience. "I" can on the other hand experience my "self" as an object. Idealism is clinging to the idea that because all of one's experience as located within the self subjectivity is all there is. It is a regression into solipsism. But matter and nonmatter aren't really issues at all. [dmb] The difference between pure empiricism and scientific empiricism is exactly what I've been hammer on for so many moons, except I tend to use "radical empiricism" with it's "pure experience" and oppose it to "sensory empiricism". Quite a lot hinges upon understanding the difference between these two, but you just won't hear it from me or Pirsig or James. [Krimel] Pirsig seems to love you but James just isn't around to defend himself from your slander. I can and have given you lots of quotes from a wide selection of his works that show how misguided you are in your interpretation of him but still you rattle on like he is your ace coon boon. [dmb] Once you get it, you'll see that it's not magical. [Krimel] Oh I get it. James makes it very clear that his is working from the bottom up. He states unequivocally that he begins with parts and works toward wholes. He is equally clear that perception is not fundamental. It is built up and out of sensation and his is extra clear about the relationship between perception and conception. But at least you are right about something: it is not magical. [dmb] This is a natural mysticism that limits its claims to what can be known in experience. Experience in this case, is NOT defined as it is within SOM or sensory empiricism. [Krimel] James attempts to include perceptual processes into empiricism. But that does not open the door, as you would have it, to any form of weirdness. [dmb} On top of rejecting the metaphysical assumption they entail, in this broader definition of experience other modes of consciousness are not automatically dismissed, excluded or bracketed out. (because they're JUST subjective)The traditional meaning of "experience" in modern philosophy and science is so narrow that any claims that don't square with it are considered to be nothing more than flakey supernaturalism. [Krimel] In the ongoing effort to make some sense out of what you are saying, I will ask one more time: What is it exactly that you think can be gleaned from "mystical" experience? I see all kinds of health benefits from meditation, prayer even regular church attendance but I don't think any of these offer insight into how the world works. You claim that consciousness is not emerging from the organic processes found in this time and this place but rather that they are somehow an ever present feature of the cosmos. Please, I am begging you, explain to me how some kind of undetectable all pervading awareness is not supernatural. But my guess is you will do what you usually do, act like Platt and Ham and clam up or disappear. Surprise me, you big romantic clown, you! 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