Happy Spring to you, Marsha --
Maybe I should stick to 'unpatterned experience', experience
without overlaying memory/concepts/patterns.
How is experience different than value-sensibility?
You seem to have a semantic problem with cognition which muddles your
epistemology and makes your understanding of experience something that it is
not.
I don't see why our common understanding of "experience" must be adjusted or
redefined to satisfy a philosopher's thesis. The dictionary defines
experience as: "The conscious perception of an external, bodily, or psychic
event." It says nothing about "patterns", nor does it qualify experience
as "direct" or "indirect". In a more general definition, however, it does
state that experience is "something personally encountered, undergone, or
lived through," indicating that experience is a "process" that is
proprietary to the individual, rather than an independent realm or level
accessed or "attached to" by the observer.
Also, there is no difference between experience and "the experienced".
John's suggestion that "experience may be telling you something" is
romantically enticing but epistemically wrong. We bring value into the
world as being, and the objective reality we construct reflects our value
preferences. Through experience we each make our "being-in-the-world" a
representation of our individual value-complement.
For me, experience is an extension of value-sensibility whereby apprehension
is oriented to the space/time dimensions of the intellectualized
("conventional"?) universe. Thus, "immediate experience" -- e.g., pain,
pleasure, fear, change, tacticity, sensory perception -- is converted
(reified?) into discrete objects and events, sometimes called "universals".
This is the work of intellection in conjunction with memory (your
"overlaying concepts/patterns"). So that what "begins" as value sensibility
ends up as what we call experiential or empirical knowledge.
Knowledge conforms to the universal order of our relational existence
because it is derived from the same fundamental Sensibility/Otherness that
is primary to every conscious subject ("experiencer"). Only the individual
preferences, qualitative feelings, psycho-emotional responses, and valuistic
meanings are unique to the observing subject.
Have I helped to clarify the issue, Marsha, or only further complicated your
understanding?
Essentially yours,
Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Marsha
The MoQ confusion stems from the fact that Pirsig is a "monist", not an
absolutist. And, although he did not name or posit an "absolute source",
his equivalency paradigm "Experience = Quality = Reality" leaves the
inference that one or more of these equivalents is "absolute", whereas in
fact all three relate to the finite, existential world.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 9:49 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> How would you break this down to address: the experiencer,
> the experience and the experienced?
> because undoubtedly they are descriptions of the same thing,
> the event, the experience, no?
They are not the same in the conventional use of English.
_I am seeing a tree. _'I' is the seer. The experience is seeing.
The tree is the seen. Experience has become a trinity.
What I have been saying is that only the seeing is a fact in
that moment. The seer, 'I' , and the seen, 'tree' are surmised
from the experience of seeing. They are built from patterns, no?
I agree the tree, the I, and this act of seeing are built from patterns,
yes.
But I cannot 'see' how handing the crown of significance to any
one part of the trinity of experience is better in any way.
All three legs of the tripod depend upon the others to avoid toppling.
"The seeing" is not a fact if it's a hallucination
The seer is not a fact if there is no seeing.
The seen is not a fact if either the seer or the seeing disappears
from view,
Therefore, they are the three, interdependent in order for
experience to occur.
There are grammatical rules, dictionaries and social training
for interpreting the words we use, no?
yes! Which influences the conceptual frameworks of meaning
we build.
I agree completely.
> but to address the experience of the hot stove, it depends.
> It can be good, or it can be bad. When a child learns to listen
> carefully to its mother's warnings, that is an overall good.
> If the child is so badly injured that she dies, it's an overall bad.
Judgements based on individual static pattern histories and dynamic
context. I've always wondered if RMP would say there is a difference
between the value/experience and the judgements made subsequent
to the experience. I would think there is a big difference, no?
But as Ham points out, without the judgement there can be no valuation
of
the event. However he takes then the judger as absolute whereas I see
it as
none of the three legs of the tripod can be absolute - you need a
subject,
an object and a valuation all at once or there is no experience.
> Thus the value or Quality of the event is not in the immediate,
> experience, but in the overall context - an interpretation between
> the
> subject and object AND some third overarching principle of valuation.
> Interpretation is triadic in nature and thus more inherently stable >
> than
> the diadic relationship of S/O.
>
> As you know,
I know Absolutely nothing, how about you?
Marsha
I thought there were no absolutes. :-)
John
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