THIS was a great post... Thanks to both of you.
At 10:23 PM 7/2/2009, you wrote:
Krimel said to dmb:
... You adopt and claim that Pirsig adopts an
almost purely phenomenological reading of James.
This is the kind of reading that turns him into
one of the pure idealists he was so vehemently
opposed to. All you are doing is solving the SOM
problem by denying that anything outside of your
personal immediate experience has value or even
exists. This is not what James is saying at all.
You don't solve this kind of problem by
pretending half of it doesn't exist or by defining it away.
dmb says:
Well, at least you're admitting that SOM is more
than just a straw man. I guess that marks SOME
progress. Sadly, however, this is the
uncomprehending reply that I expected. Your
accusation above reveals a misunderstanding
which you repeat several times below. The idea
that I would be turning James into an idealist
only makes sense from within SOM itself. Since
I'm saying external, objective reality is just a
concept, just a product of reflection, you
figure, I must be advocating a reality composed
entirely of the other half, of subjectivity.
From within the assumptions of SOM, that would
look like idealism, if not solipsism. Ah, but of
course that's not what I'm saying at all because
the radical empiricist has already rejected SOM
and so the subjective self is just a product of
reflection too, just a concept derived from
experience every bit as much as the objective
side. There is an article about Nishida in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that happens
to make this point pretty well.
"For Nishida, experience in its original form is
not the exercise of individuals equipped with
sensory and mental abilities who contact an
exterior world; rather it precedes the
differentiation into subject experiencing and
object experienced, and the individual is formed
out of it. The moment of seeing a color or
hearing a sound is prior not only to the
thought that the color or sound is the activity
of an external object or that one is sensing it,
but also to the judgment of what the color or
sound might be (Nishida 1990, 3). Pure
experience names not only the basic form of
every sensuous and every intellectual experience
but also the fundamental form of reality, indeed
the one and only reality from which all
differentiated phenomena are to be understood.
Cognitive activities such as thinking or
judging, willing, and intellectual intuition are
all derivative forms of pure experience but
identical to it insofar as they are in actwhen
thinking, willing, etc. are going on. The
experience of a running horse, for example,
underlies the judgment that the horse is
running, and the activity of judging is an
exercise of pure experience prior to a
subsequent judgment that I am now judging.
Objective phenomena likewise derive from pure
experience; when unified they are called
nature, while spirit names the activity of
unifying. Pure experience launches the dynamic
process of reality that differentiates into
subjective and objective phenomena on their way
to a higher unity, and the recapture of our
unitary foundation is what Nishida means by the
Good.Nishida would deny that his position is a
kind of idealism, either subjective or
transcendental, because no subjective mind,
human or divine, is the origin of what is taken
as reality, and no personified or ego-aware
spirit is its beginning or end. His notion of
pure experience clearly shows the influence of
William James, Ernst Mach, and others, but it
differs from their notions as well..."
Krimel said:James isn't saying there is no
relationship between knower and known. He is
saying we have to be careful of an artificial one.
dmb says:That's right. But it's not like he was
on the lookout for artificial conceptions to pop
up. He found one and identified it as a problem
throughout the history of philosophy. That artificial conception is SOM.
I appreciate your attempt to bring Lambert into
it, even though he's a theological type, but for
the most part I don't see the relevance of the
quotes you picked. I suspect that's because
you're reading them just as you've been reading
me, from within SOM. Maybe you'll pick a
favorite or two and explain to me how it address
the issues or refutes something I said.
Krimel said:
All I can add is that you are doing nothing more
to solve the problem than inverting it. Instead
of saying that internal ideas are not "real" you
want to say that any external reality is not
"real". You are trading one extreme position for
another. I do not think this is what James is after.
dmb says:
That's another example of your reading things
from within SOM. "Pure experience cannot be
called either physical or psychical: it
logically precedes both." In other words, if
subjects and objects are derived from
experience, it would be logically impossible for
that experience to be the experience of a
subject. That would be a case of the subject
being derived from the experience of the
subject. A guy would have to be retarded to
think that makes sense. And yet that's what your
accusation amounts to. Sorry, but I've made this
point many, many times and it's really not that
complicated. Your obliviousness to the simple
logic of this is very frustrating.
Krimel quoted from James's "Some Problems of Philosophy":
"The pragmatic rule is that the meaning of a
concept may always be found, if not in some
sensible particular which it directly
designates, then in some particular difference
in the course of human experience which its
being true will make. Test every concept by the
question 'What sensible difference to anybody
will its truth make?' and you are in the best
possible position for understanding what it
means and for discussing its importance. If,
questioning whether a certain concept be true or
false, you can think of absolutely nothing that
would practically differ in the two cases, you
may assume that the alternative is meaningless
and that your concept is no distinct idea. If
two concepts lead you to infer the same
particular consequence, then you may assume that
they embody the same meaning under different names."
dmb says:
If memory serves this is what James said in
relation to the question of whether the man got
round the squirrel or not. His friends debated
it for a while and then hoped James would settle
the question for them. His reply was as you see
above. He puts it in careful Victorian language
but today we'd just say there is no practical
difference. It just doesn't matter. And that's
pretty much how I feel about this quote. How is it connected to our dispute?
Lambert said: (and Krimel thinks this quote
"provides a bit of insight into the very discussion we are having here".)
"One of the more difficult and pressing problems
for understanding James's radically empiricist
Weltanschauung as a whole concerns the terms
"experience" and "experienced" themselves. What
he means by "experienced" in his statement
above, as well as by "experience" in his thesis
of pure experience, has been a subject of great
debate among his interpreters, with no real
consensus emerging. A number of different
interpretations have been suggested, ranging
from a variety of phenomenalist and panpsychist
interpretations, in which to be experienced
might mean to have an actual experiencer, or to
be experienced by something, or even to be
self-experiencing, to a rather moderate and
inclusive methodological interpretation, in
which "experienced" means to be experienceable
or describable in terms of experience."
dmb says:
WEll, if you're suggesting that there are
pragmatists who read James's and Dewey's radical
empiricism differently than I do, then I can
only say, "yea, I know". Maybe you recall the
explanations about the differences between
Neo-Pragmatism and Classical Pragmatism? Their
respective stances toward radical empiricism is
probably the single most important difference
between the two. This is the difference between
Rorty and Pirsig, between Matt Kundert and
myself, between Stuhr, Rosenthal, Hildebrand and
their counterparts on the neo-pragmatist side.
There is a paper published at robertpirsig.org
called "Clash of the Pragmatists" that explores
this. I wrote it about three years ago so it
would probably already embarrass me to re-read
it but it does show that I've been aware of the
lack of unity on this issue for a long time. But
then again, you're not a neo-pragmatist and you
certainly have not been making their case.
Krimel said:
I think you are arguing for an extreme
phenomenalist, panpsychist position. Obviously I
think its rubbish. But the inversion of the
problem as a whole from "thoughts" aren't real
to "things" aren't real is exactly your program.
I don't think an exclusive position either way
works at all and I really don't think that is what James is after.
dmb says:
There is another example of you reading me from
within SOM. From that perspective, a rejection
of objectivity has to be an acceptance of
subjectivity because those are the only choices.
But as I keep saying, the kind of radical
empiricist I'm talking about has already
rejected the idea that these are our only
choices. Also, I seriously doubt that you even
understand what "extreme phenomenalist,
panpsychist" means. I think you made that up
that meaningly drivel about five seconds after
you read the Lambert quote. You tend to do that
sort of bullshit. This, for example...
Krimel said previously:
As I understand it conjunction is generalization
and disjunction is discrimination. These are the
two great superpowers that give us pattern recognition.
dmb tried to be polite about this little piece of stupidity:
Conjunction junction, what's your function? It's
not about generalization so much as the
continuity in experience. ... James is saying
that experience is a continuous stream in which
a complex series of transitional moments
seemlessly takes us from thought to thing or from
thing to thought. In other words, subject and
object are already unified in experience and...
Krimel replied:Those were James' terms. I was
merely putting them into terms that make more
sense to me. Actually he thinks the problem of
traditional empiricists is... Kant's a prioris
blah blah ... Pirsig's talk about... blah blah
.... Kahneman and Tversky's ideas in prospect
theory which I have mentioned several times.
dmb says:
You were merely putting James's terms into terms
that you understand? Is that so? Please explain
to me how "the condition of being joined" is in
any way related to "generalization"? Obviously,
they aren't related at all and you were trying
to interpret James on the topic of "conjunctive"
relations in experience without even knowing
what the term means. I was trying to be polite
about it before but it's obvious that you're
bullshitting you're way through this whole
thing. Since James is accusing the traditional
empiricists of leaving out these "conjunctive"
experiences, where do you get the balls to
pretend that you understand this at all, let
alone better than anyone else? I just deleted a
few unnecessarily hostile comments but I do have
to say, at least, that this sort of thing doesn't exactly make you look good.
Krimel quoted Lambert:
"This understanding of the concrete and
frequently sensible character of experience
draws attention to a streak in James's thought
that often disturbs his modern-day readers - an
apparent romanticism concerning the relation of
thoughts to sensation. Some of his pithy remarks
to the contrary, James does not ultimately mean
simply to take up a romantic position against
thought with his thesis of pure experience, thus
preferring an un-"conscious," mystical state to
the abstract one that follows upon reflection.
Commenting in 1909 on his own essay "The
Function of Cognition," where percepts are
treated as the only realm of reality, James
writes that he "now treat[s] concepts as a
coordinate realm." Clearly, if percepts and
concepts are coordinate, there cannot be a
philosophical preference for the perceptual or
sensory order, whatever his rhetoric may suggest."
dmb says:I wouldn't expect too much mysticism
from an academic theologian. That doesn't mean a
case can't be made. Lots of people have and when
the time is ripe, I'll make it to you. As to the
larger point here, percepts and concepts are
presented as coordinate in the essays I've been
quoting from and wasn't even aware that James
had previously held otherwise. So this couldn't
possibly be in contradiction to anything I've
said. I've been saying that subjects and objects
are concepts rather than existential realities,
but that doesn't make them unreal. They're real concepts.
dmb said:
That traditional conception [of experience]
entails the assumption that the external,
objective reality is coming into the subjective
perceiver of that reality through his senses.
Krimel replied:
And that is exactly what James says is happening.
dmb says:
That is the fourth example, in this single post,
of you reading things from within SOM. That is
exactly NOT what James is saying. You're reading
his solution, radical empiricism, as if he were
endorsing the problematic view he just replaced.
Like I said, it is a conception from within
subject-object philosophy and radical empiricism
sees that as a philosophical problem to be
overcome. Notice what he's saying here about the
instant field of the present. It is "as yet
undifferentiated into thought and thing".
Krimel replied with quote and a comment:
Yes and notice here what he says about that very
point: "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."
I guess if you think "...new-born babes, or men
in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or
blows..." have the inside track to Nirvana but I
don't think that is what James is about.
dmb says:
James is only pointing out that "experience pure
in the literal sense" is an exceptional state of
mind. This qualification goes along quite nicely
with his idea that percepts and concepts are
coordinate or, in the MOQ's terms, that direct
everyday experience involves the constant
interplay between static quality and dynamic
quality. This also goes along quite nicely with
the idea that our thoughts shape what we see as
much as our sight shapes what we think. The
difference between babies and mystics is that
babies don't have yet have any static patterns
to abandoned but the idea is essentially about
recapturing that original undivided state. But
the mystic's goal is NOT to return to an
undeveloped state. Mystics go beyond their
static patterns of thought while babies have yet
to acquire them. The mystic transcends his
ego-identity while the baby doesn't yet have any
such thing. And extreme situations can bring
about the mystical experience spontaneously,
that is the say without the benefit of
meditation or the other techniques that have
been developed. The American Indian vision
quest, for example, was a relatively dangerous
and unreliable way to precipitate such an
experience. Later, because it was safer and more
reliable, they adopted the use of peyote. The
ancient mystery religions where soaked in
hallucinogens, for example. Some of today's most
admired artists suffered childhood illnesses
severe enough to have nearly killed them and
that experience had a lot to do with the
development of their creative intuition. Francis
Ford Coppola is one such case. And James himself
was quite impressed with the effects of nitrous
oxide in his own experience. It wasn't his
golden ticket to the Truth, but it made him
realize that other forms of consciousness were
available to us. In short, I do not take this
quote as a refutation of mysticism or pure
experience. It is a qualification worth
mentioning but it does not undo the larger
point, which is simply that pure experience is
occurs prior to the differentiations of
consciousness and is very much related to the
mystical state of undivided consciousness. To be
enlightened is to fully realize this lack of
division. To be an infant is to live in this
lack of division without "realizing" a damn thing. Big difference.
Krimel said:
First of all one could imagine a world with no
subjects and just objects which is materialism
or a world of just ideas and no objects. I don't
think you have to seek hard for quotes of mine
that suggest which way I lean. I won't even
bother searching to show which way you incline.
... I have also stated many times that my
inclination toward a pre-existing world external
is an act of faith. I don't think your clinging
to idealism is any less so. ... One is not more privileged than the other. ...
dmb says:
That is the fifth example of where you are
reading things from within SOM. By now, there's
no point in elaborating on why this is so wrong.
Krimel said:
Except that a world of "pure experience" is
impossible and not even desirable to acquire or
sustain unless you want to live as "...new-born
babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows..."
dmb says:
We all begin as infants and so we all begin in a
world of pure experience so actually it is
impossible to avoid it. The trick is to realize
it in your own experience even as an adult. The
qualification that says normal consciousness is
never literally "pure", never literally and
completely devoid of static patterns, does not
mean that this categories is extinguished or
eliminated. It simply has to qualified by the
effects of the developmental process, in which
we lose sight of it even though we're operating
on its basis all the time. Ordinary words like
feeling, intuition, hunch, and yes even
sensation refer to the persistence of this basic
mode of consciousness even in adults.
dmb said to Krimel:
As wiki article says, the traditional
"empiricists unjustly try to reduce experience
to bare sensations, according to James" because
guys like Locke and Hume saw "experience in
terms of atom like patches of color and
soundwaves". That sounds very much like your
descriptions of the way energy is transduced by our sensory organs and brains.
Krimel replied:
That view of atomic experience was being
actively pursued by Wundt and even more
aggressively by his student Titchner. The
introspectionists where among the first
approaches taken in psychology and the first to
be utterly abandoned. Sensations result totally
from different kinds of energy, modes of
transduction and pathways of processing.
Sensations are received separately and combined
in the process of perception. Hearing and seeing
are two different kinds of experience. But they
do not constitute discrete elements of experience as they too are continuous.
dmb says now:
Huh? What does that have to do with the fact
that James criticized the reductionist
tendencies of the traditional empiricists?
Aren't you just demonstrating a more
contemporary version of the very same
reductionism? Yes, you are. And if lightwaves
and soundwaves aren't the forms of energy
transduced, then what kind of energy are you talking about?
dmb said:
I'm not saying your descriptions don't reflect
what's going on in that branch of science. I'm
just saying that this science is working within
the assumptions of SOM and within the
traditional empiricism. It's based on the very
assumptions that radical empiricism is attacking
and sees as a problem to be solved.
Krimel replied:
That is because you think it is important to
over turn all of science. Your SOM label is just
your way of feeling justified about refusing to
address the obvious. ... As I believe I have
said before, Dave, you are not making an
argument here you are making an excuse.
dmb says:
Really? SOM is just my label? We've regressed
back to that now? In the most recent exchanges I
showed you where SOM is in your own comments, in
traditional empiricism, in the philosophical
attacks of James, Pirsig, Dewey, in Stuhr's
explanation of Dewey, and in the work of
Nishida. For you to revert back to this old
tactic at this point only makes you look like a
belligerent jerk and like a guy whose just not
very smart. Obviously, you're the one with nothing but excuses.
Krimel said:
As I said if I HAD to choose between idealism
and materialism I wouldn't because I think we
need a bit of each. If you stuck a gun to my
head, I would pick materialism but even
materialism today is not "whirling particles" it is probability fields.
dmb says:
That is the sixth example of you reading things
from within SOM. Again, the debate between
idealism and materialism takes place within SOM
and does not make any sense in terms of radical empiricism.
dmb said:
Like cutting the lady up to find her beauty, it
just doesn't work. Anti-reductionism is just a
sophisticated form of the sentiment that says
the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.
Krimel replied:
One more time there is nothing wrong with asking
what conditions are necessary for a whole to exist at all.
dmb says:
Right, there is nothing wrong with asking about
the lower conditions that make the higher
conditions possible. Unfortunately, asking those
questions does not amount to reductionism and so
your reply does not even address the actual
charge. Obviously, you've failed to answer the
charge again because you don't understand it.
This incomprehension is quite baffling to me
because the explanations seem so obvious to me.
The one above is child's play and the one below
should be well within your reach as well but for
some reason this simple concept eludes you entirely.
dmb said:
It (anti-reductionism) simply asks that complex
phenomena be assessed in their own terms, on
their own level of complexity and that they not
be reduced to whirling particles. Such is the
case for experience. It is far more complex than
any of the physiological processes that can be
correlated to any given experience. To use one
of your old examples, the fact that we can
detect the kind of brain state that exists in a
person who is meditating simply doesn't mean
that the meditative state of consciousness IS a brain state.
Krimel replied:
The fact that meditators can be shown to have
similar patterns of brain activity is what
actually leads us to say that meditation is a
brain state. The same way that sleepers have a
similar brain states as to drunks and pill
poppers and people watching movies. Those it is
the common features that make them brain
states. Those similarities may not account of
the felt experiences of individual meditators
but the similarity of their descriptions is what
contributes to calling this a "state" in the first place.
dmb says:
Oh, for Christ's sake! Do you think I'm
objecting to the word "state"? You can't really
be that stupid, can you? Reductionism is when
you reduce complex things like consciousness to
the biological processes. The objection, your
obliviousness, is EQUATING the brain's
functional state with the experience had by the
meditators. May I remind you of a simple fact,
the people who observed and recorded the brain
states of the meditators had a completely
different experience than the meditators did. In
effect, they were observers of the experience
from outside the experience itself. They were
looking at physical objects, namely the
scientific instruments and the brains they were
hooked up to. If you asked them what the
meditative experience itself is like based on
their role in the experiment, they couldn't
possibly have a clue. And yet you see no problem
in equating the two, in saying that meditation
IS a brain state, which is a claim that such a
brain state and meditation are identical. That's
reductionism. Like I said, under normal
circumstances the brain state itself in not even
a part of the meditator's experience.
Krimel replied:
>From one point of view that state IS the
meditator's experience. But any experience can
be understood from many points of view.
dmb says:
The observer of the brain state is having an
experience too but, obviously, it is not the
experience of the meditative state. This is the
whole point of being an anti-reductionist. He
says it is inappropriate to confuse these two
things. Like I said, people have been able to
get at the point, purpose, effect and meaning of
the meditative states long before there was
anything like knowledge of what the brain is doing at the time.
Krimel replied:
Right and looking directly at what is going on
at the biological level helps account for what
makes those states significant evolutionarily.
The Dalai Lama for example thinks his meditators
are developing heightened compassion. EEG
recording show increased activity in the areas
of cortex previously associated with such
feelings. Learning to feel more open to others
is a healthy, socially desirable way to be, a
good skill to acquire. But how is this
philosophically or metaphysically significant?
dmb say:
Are you saying that compassion IS a brain state
now? Are you giving us a materialistic reduction of love now?
Krimel said:
I have never said that meditation can be
described purely or exclusively as a brain state ...
dmb says:
If you think you haven't said that, then you
don't even know what the meaning of "is" is.
Unbelievable! You just can't be that dumb.
There's no way. It has to be an act or a practical joke or something.
By the way, trying to untangle your nonsense is
not fun. It's just a chore. It's a drag. I'd
welcome a real challenge but this ain't it. Even
with major help from that theologian, you're not making any sense.
Over and out,dmb
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