Hi Steve, Since I still cannot find the words I'm looking for, I think I'll speak the words I have. This is a beautiful post. The quotes from ZMM are still as beautiful as I first remembered them. They are equal to my experience with the guitar and or listening to Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. When I was hopelessly lost somewhere between Philosophy East and Philosophy West, they were the ecstatic joy of finding a way home. And reading these quotes this morning made my heart quicken.
Thank you. Marsha On May 13, 2010, at 6:52 PM, Steven Peterson wrote: > Hi DMB, > > > >> dmb says: >> Instead of concepts shaping what's "given" to the senses, concepts are >> "taken" from the stream of experience they way one would "take" a bucket of >> water from a river. The bucket of water does not get in the way of the >> river. It does not represent the river or correspond to the river. It's >> derived from the river. You captured something from the river and in some >> sense it's not something ontologically distinct from the river. But it sure >> ain't moving like a river and in some sense you can't even compare them. In >> this analogy, pure experience is the river and concepts are the buckets of >> water. >> >> Steve replied: >> I think this analogy punches up the notion that concepts take one out of >> reality, while I can't see how that could be. I don't think this switch from >> give to take is what James was doing at all. For James experience is a >> give-and-take as well as a creative transcendence of what was previously >> given/taken in a bringing something new into experience, and it's futile and >> pointless to sort out where "given" begins and ends and where "created" >> begins and ends. > > Steve: > As is becoming typical, instead of responding to my objections to the > analogy, you post a bunch of quotes... > > >> dmb says: >> >> "The history of the theory of knowledge or epistemology would have been very >> different if instead of the word 'data' or 'givens', it had happened to >> start with calling the qualities in question 'takens'." (John Dewey, >> 1929;22-3) > > Steve: > Whether you talk about givens or takens, you've still set up a > dichotomy between reality and concepts. Aren't concepts a part of > reality? When you "take" a bucket of reality, where are you taking to? > This is my objection to the analogy that you didn't bother to address. > If experience is the stream and if experience is reality, then the > buckets in this analogy must must be something not part of reality. > > > DMB: >> Actually, the river-bucket analogy is James's and it does oppose the myth of >> the given in, as in the quote from Dewey, who was also a radical empiricist. >> And James certainly didn't think it was futile and pointless to sort out the >> difference between the stream and the buckets. > > Steve: > James also said that the trail of the human serpent runs over > everything. As Sam Harris pointed out in his end notes to The End of > Faith, it is pretty easy to get James to argue with himself. > > > DMB: >> Also, Steve, this thing you think is futile to distinguish. We're talking >> about the first cut in the MOQ, static and dynamic. The river is flowing and >> dynamic, the bucket is discrete and static. I think you're missing something >> very big here, Mr. Peterson. > > Steve: > Really? You can distinguish the static and dynamic aspects of reality > in practice? DQ/sq is the the first cut and a clean one as > metaphysics, but we've been talking about epistemology here. We are > talking about knowledge, and in doing so we are supposing a > distinction between a knower (the "taker" with the buckets) and what > is known (the stream). People have different experiences because they > bring to experience different sets of static patterns. In our moment > to moment experience we cannot completely distinguish the static from > the dynamic. As soon as we start talking about a person _having_ an > experience whether in terms of giving or taking, the dynamic and > static aspects of that experiences are conflated to the point that it > is impossible to say where the dynamic part ends and the static part > begins. > > Remember this bit on relativism from ZAMM? > "Why does everybody see Quality differently? This was the question he > had always had to answer speciously before. Now he said, ``Quality is > shapeless, formless, indescribable. To see shapes and forms is to > intellectualize. Quality is independent of any such shapes and forms. > The names, the shapes and forms we give Quality depend only partly on > the Quality. They also depend partly on the a priori images we have > accumulated in our memory. We constantly seek to find, in the Quality > event, analogues to our previous experiences. If we didn't we'd be > unable to act. We build up our language in terms of these analogues. > We build up our whole culture in terms of these analogues.'' > > The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they > come to it with different sets of analogues. He gave linguistic > examples, showing that to us the Hindi letters da, da, and dha all > sound identical to us because we don't have analogues to them to > sensitize us to their differences. Similarly, most Hindi-speaking > people cannot distinguish between da and the because they are not so > sensitized. It is not uncommon, he said, for Indian villagers to see > ghosts. But they have a terrible time seeing the law of gravity. > > This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition > students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions. > They all have relatively similar backgrounds and similar knowledge. > But if a group of foreign students were brought in, or, say, medieval > poems out of the range of class experience were brought in, then the > students' ability to rank Quality would probably not correlate as > well. > > In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines > him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, > but because people are different in terms of experience. He speculated > that if two people had identical a priori analogues they would see > Quality identically every time. There was no way to test this, > however, so it had to remain just speculation. > > In answer to his colleagues at school he wrote: > > ``Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and > true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of > philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking > something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and > everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be broken down into > subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious > but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct. > > ``The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our > environment can understand is that `Quality is the response of an > organism to its environment' ... > > ``In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to > our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We > invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, > language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call > these analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our > children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We > throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane > asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. > Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us > to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it. > > ``Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and > include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. > That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are > defining something less than Quality itself.'' > > > Steve: > In the above, the buckets are the analogues (later, the static > patterns). The stream is DQ, but it is not all of reality, it is only > the dynamic aspect of reality. It is constantly defined and never > exhausts definition, so it is undefinable. Reality is the collection > of all the analogues in addition to the buckets. The buckets aren't > something outside of reality that merely take from reality. > > Best, > Steve > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
