On Dec 28, 2009, at 2:19 AM, Ham Priday wrote:
> John and Marsha --
>
> [John, on 12/6]:
>> Experience can't be what you describe, either unpatterned or without
>> staticity. The very defining of experience requires a static pattern in
>> order to be experienced. The idea of "before" is itself a static pattern
>> of existence relative to time and obviates the pure nullity you postulate,
>> imo.
>>
>> But "unpatterned experience" is far worse because it's a philosophical
>> self-contradiction.
>
> [Marsha, on 12/27]:
>> Is it a philosophical self-contradiction in the same way as seeing orange
>> or blue? If not, then how is it a philosophical self-contradiction?
>
> [John replies]:
>> It's a contradiction because experience is a patterning. Thus you can't
>> have "unpatterned patterning" in a philosophically logical way. Not
>> unless you want to do some explaining of yourself young lady!
>
> [Marsha persists]:
>> John,
>> Quality is unpatterned experience and patterned experience, so no,
>> experience is not necessarily patterned; that can be realized first-hand.
>> Experience often involves patterns, but sometimes it does not involve
>> patterns.
>
> I have to side with John in this debate, not because experience can't be
> anything we want to call it, but because Pirsig specifically defines it as
> "any pattern that appears long enough to be noticed within the flux of
> immediate experience (i.e. within Dynamic Quality)." But Marsha is also
> right if you take seriously Pirsig's assertion that "Quality is the first
> slice of undivided experience." (It is doubtful, however, that a logician
> would accept a thing as "undivided" once sliced.)
>
> The ambiguity in these statements is easily resolved by regarding experience
> as "patterned awareness" and sensibility as the emotive state induced by pure
> (unpatterned) Value. Pirsig's
> holdout for direct ("pre-intellectual") experience to support his
> transcendental Quality is the cause of this confusion, and it has led to
> incomprehensible descriptions like this:
> "Immediate experience is experience where there is no distinction between
> what is experienced and the act of experiencing itself." -- [Anthony McWatt:
> Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality]
Greetings Ham,
Can there be experience _without_ picking up the thread of mental chatter or an
analytical thread? Yes! Ant's
statement is perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. It seems more a matter of
awareness of such experiences.
> "Immediate experience is experience where there is no distinction between
> what is experienced and the act
> of experiencing itself." -- [Anthony McWatt: Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality]
Thank you for posting this quote.
Marsha
>
> Epistemologically, experience is clearly both an "act" (which is itself
> differentiated) and the cognizant awareness of "distinctions" or patterns. I
> call experience the process of "objectivizing", and I distinguish it from
> value-sensibility which is primary to experience and esthetic or emotional
> (rather than "intellectual") in nature. Unfortunately, MoQ's author failed
> to make this distinction.
>
> But more important to philosophy, I think, is the concept that existence is a
> differentiated reality in which All is perceived as "each and every" by a
> subject in relation to its object(s). Every moment, every experience, every
> thought, every idea is differentiated from every other. And the substantive
> ground of this reality is the Value from which we are each estranged at
> birth. We can experience and know only what we construct from this Value --
> good, bad, or indifferent.
>
> Yet, the fact that this pluralistic construction is not chaotic but has an
> order (or "intelligence", if you will) that is universally apprehended and
> appreciated strongly implies a creative source that transcends all difference
> and otherness. Although Mr. Pirsig would like us to think of this source as
> DQ, I cannot accept Quality as an absolute. Quality for me is only the
> valuistic "realization" of otherness, and it requires a sensible agent. We
> are all "One in Essence". The source I propose is uncreated, unconditional,
> and beyond experience. It is the essential "not-other" from which the
> appearance of otherness is derived.
>
> I hope this will help to clarify your differences. Thanks for allowing me to
> intrude in this discussion, and let me take this opportunity to wish you both
> a healthful and spiritually fulfilling New Year.
>
> Essentially yours,
> Ham
>
>
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