On Dec 28, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Marsha V. wrote:
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]
What you redundantly praise as "perfect" is the fact that Ant's statement
applies to ALL experience. The "immediate" act of experience and the
awareness of something are one and the same phenomenon. Likewise, being
aware is contingent upon a cognizant observer and a referent object.
Experiential reality is a dualism of value-sensibility (subjective
awareness) and objectivized being (otherness).
You'll note that Pirsig and I agree that the ground of_existence_is Value
(Quality). But value-sensibility is_our_essence, not the Essence of
Reality. We do not "experience" Value directly. Value must be realized
(made sensible) by an independent agent in order to exist (to be experienced
as finite phenomena). And, since Existence is differentiated from Value in
the "act" or process of experience, Existence and Essence are not synomous.
Pirsig's "metaphysics" never transcended existence. His Quality hierarchy
is based entirely on the experiential (phenomenal) realm Euphemizing
physical existence as experienced patterns of Dynamic Quality does not
eliminate subject/object duality.
Thanks, Marsha. And best wishes for the new year,
Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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