Hi again, Marsha --
I am not sure I understand what you are stating. I am calling
unpatterned experience or direct experience, as I understand,
maybe mistakenly, Ant's quote to suggest, experience without
patterns of interpretation. The MoQ has the experience (value)
coming before the projection of the observer and the object,
and I find that one need not necessarily project them at all.
I seem to be having difficulty explaining "experience" to you and John.
Perhaps it is the special meaning of "pattern" or "direct experience" used
by the Pirsigians that impedes your understanding.
I choose 'unpatterned experience' as not to embellish the
experience in any way.
"Embellishing the experience" is not the problem, Marsha. There is no such
thing as "generic experience", anyway. That is, you can't have an
experience of a "general nature." That's like being "generally" alive or
"generally" pregnant. Each and every experience is the awareness of a
particular phenomenon. The problem is that what has been called "direct
experience (of Value)" is a misnomer. We do not "experience" absolute or
undifferentiated value. All experience is directly delineated, immanent,
and relative to the subjective self.
The apple on the kitchen table is a visual phenomenon. It is the objective
representation (subjective "interpretation") of personal values that relate
to your esthetic or gustatory sensibilities. These are all "immediately
aware" to you upon observing the apple. When you bite into the apple, you
have another experience. The sweetness or tartness, texture and succulence
of the apple are the "qualia" you experience proprioceptively (internally)
as you eat it. Your experience of the apple and its composite attributes
are, I believe, what Pirsig means by a "pattern of Quality". But the
pattern does not exist until you experience it, which is why he calls
experience "the cutting edge of reality." It is the individual's
value-sensibility that actualizes the object by experiencing it
differentially. The cumulative experience of an individual's
being-in-the-world is that individual's existential reality.
Now, the example Pirsig gives of "direct" or "pre-intellectual" experience
is the pain one feels when sitting on a hot stove This is a proprioceptive
response to physiological injury. If you are the stove-sitter, you feel the
burning of your behind; no one else does. Otherwise, there is no difference
between internally felt and externally objectivized experiences
The fact that an experience may or may not involve "intellect" is irrelevant
to this epistemology. I suppose my enjoyment of a Tchaikovsky symphony
involves some intellectual activity, whereas eating an apple doesn't. But
so what? It's still an experience -- or, in Pirsig's terms, a Quality
pattern.
If this doesn't make the epistemology clearer, tell me where you think the
problem lies.
Thanks, Marsha.
--Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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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