Krimel said to Ron: ...Even the much vaunted "pure experience" is entirely a matter of sensation. From a World of Pure Experience:
“Pure experience” is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don’t appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure experience in this state is simply but another name for feeling or sensation." dmb says: Oh, goodie. Does this mean that you are finally willing to admit that there is nothing supernatural about this kind of mysticism? After explaining radical empiricism (with the quotes about the secondary, conceptual nature of subjects and objects I so frequently post), on the last page of chapter 29, Pirsig says: "Anyway, all this certainly answered the question of whether the MOQ was a foreign, cultish, deviant way of looking at things. the MOQ is a continuation of the mainstream of 20th century American philosophy. It is a form of pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good. It adds that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized Hegelian Absolute. It is direct everyday experience. Through this identification of pure value with pure experience, the MOQ paves the way for an enlarged way of looking at experience which can resolve all sorts of anomalies that traditional empiricism has not been able to cope with." Marsha helpfully quoted this part of the explanation.... "What the Metaphysics of Quality adds to James' pragmatism and his radical empiricism is the idea that the primal reality from which subjects and objects spring is value. By doing so it seems to unite pragmatism and radical empiricism into a single fabric. Value, the pragmatic test of truth, is also the primary empirical experience. The Metaphysics of Quality says pure experience is value. Experience which is not valued is not experienced. The two are the same. This is where value fits. Value is not at the tail-end of a series of superficial scientific deductions that puts it somewhere in a mysterious undetermined location in the cortex of the brain. Value is at the very front of the empirical procession." There was a Japanese philosopher who saw what James was doing with his radical empiricism and he recognized a philosophical brother. Like Pirsig and Northrop, Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) was interested in an East-West fusion. Here's a little sketch from Wikipedia... Nishida was presented with a newly unique opportunity to contemplate eastern philosophical issues in the fresh light that western philosophy shined on them. Nishida's original and creative philosophy, incorporating ideas of both Zen and western philosophy, was aimed at bringing the East and West closer. Throughout his lifetime, Nishida published a number of books and essays including "An Inquiry into the Good" and "The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview." Taken as a whole, Nishida’s life work was the foundation for the Kyoto School of Philosophy and the inspiration for the original thinking of his disciples. The most famous concept in Nishida's philosophy is the logic of basho (Japanese: 場所; usually translated as "place" or "topos"), a non-dualistic concrete logic, meant to overcome the inadequacy of the subject-object distinction essential to the subject logic of Aristotleand the predicate logic of Kant, through the affirmation of what he calls the "absolutely contradictory self-identity", a dynamic tension of opposites that, unlike the dialectical logic of Hegel, does not resolve in a synthesis, but rather defines its proper subject by maintaining the tension between affirmation and negation as opposite poles or perspectives. Please notice that Nishida, like Dewey, James, Pirsig, Stuhr and a whole bunch of other philosophers who work in this area, his aim, at least in part, was "to overcome the inadequacy of the subject-object distinction", which was so central in the history of Western philosophy. Like I keep trying to tell you, Krimel. SOM is a genuine item, a real philosophical problem that has produced paradoxes and anomalies. Radical empiricism is a solution to that problem. In order to understanding what the MOQ is all about, it is crucial to first understand what the problem is. That's why it is so important to understand the difference between Hume and James or the difference between traditional empiricism and radical empiricism. There is much, much more to say about mysticism and its connection to radical empiricism. And I'd be happy to take the conversation in that direction BUT I'm fairly convinced that this part about SOM and the two forms of empiricism has to be understood first. Without a proper grasp of these issues first, the mysticism part will very likely make no sense to you. And I'm not at all convinced that you get this yet. In effect, we've been at the end of chapter 29, where James's work is discussed, for many moons. The topic of mysticism runs throughout both books but chapter 30 of Lila sort of brings it all together. It would be nice to get to this big payoff. But I have a feeling the time is not yet ripe. I expect an uncomprehending reply but I also hope to be wrong about that. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_BR_life_in_synch_062009 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/
