dmb said to Krimel: I think it's important to realize that words like "perception" and "experience" are terms that are also used by traditional SOM empiricists, sensory empiricists. In that case, it is assumed that we're talking about the perceptions and experiences of a subject who is set over against an objective, pre-existing reality. Since these radical empiricists are rejecting that premise, it has to be understood that they do NOT mean the feelings or sensations of a subject. It wouldn't make any logical sense to say that subjects are derived from subjective experience, would it? The notion that there is experience without a subject is going to seem quite strange to a SOMer but there is no way to make sense of these quotes unless you can grasp that notion.
Krimel replied: ... I don't see James saying anything like, experience is not happening to some particular person at some particular location. ... I fear it also jibes with your romantic notion that 'the immediate flux of life' is "better" and not equivalent term for perception because it sounds all vague and touchy feel, new agey; or perhaps some irreducible concept. Whereas perception actually is a meaningful and specifiable term, we wouldn't want that since that would mean taking seriously the vast literature on the subject that in many respect originates with James. Least you start your usual rant about young and old James let me note that James cites his own Principles of Psychology throughout both Some Problems... and in Essays... The older James hardly seems to be repenting of his earlier work. dmb says: Well, this is what it really comes down to, isn't it? You don't see how James the psychologist differs from James the philosopher. And our disagreements flow from that fact. You're the psychologist but you don't believe that I'm really doing philosophy, right? My perspective is just vague, romantic, new-age nonsense whereas you use meaningful and specifiable terms. Okay, Mr. Know-it-all, strap yourself in and prepare to be surprised. Shocking as it may seem, you might actually learn something from little ole me. Wiki has made it very easy to demonstrate that you are mistaken: [Krimel] It truly is hard to see how you think this wiki advances your case. You are the one that has suggested that James is schizophrenic. Either there are two Jameses, one old and one young or two Jameses, one a psychologist and one a philosopher. My suggestion is that like any prolific author there are inconsistencies in body of his work but on the whole it all hangs together. Or if we find inconsistencies they must be treated individually and specifically rather than through lumping his work together in levels: old/young, psychologist/philosopher. "Sconsiousness" seems a peculiar choice for making this distinction. It is a term coined by young psychologist James and rarely if ever used by old philosopher James who chose instead to focus on the fragmented monad of "pure experience." It is relevant to note that James introduces sconsciousness in Chapter X of his "Principles..." the subject of the chapter is "The Consciousness of Self" where he says things like: "The Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by the name of me. But it is clear that between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw." In his section on the spiritual self he offers this on his own introspective self-analysis: "In a sense, then, it may be truly said that, in one person at least, the 'Self of selves,' when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of the collection of these peculiar motions in the head or between the head and throat. I do not for a moment say that this is all it consists of, for I fully realize how desperately hard is introspection in this field. But I feel quite sure that these cephalic motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am most distinctly aware. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should prove to be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other men, it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked." He presages Paul Ekman's work on facial expression. You might recall that Ekman has been fictionalized on Fox in the program, "Lie to Me." "They are reactions, and they are primary reactions. Everything arouses them; for objects which have no other effects will for a moment contract the brow and make the glottis close. It is as if all that visited the mind had to stand an entrance-examination, and just show its face so as to be either approved or sent back." And then your quote kicks in where he describes "sciousness" as arising from the intersection of sensory input and motor output. This thing that thinks its own existence cannot be a part of the "pure experience" as it is a reflection upon that "pure experience". It is itself and abstraction, a concept. "The sciousness in question would be the Thinker, and the existence of this thinker would be given to us rather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner perception of spiritual activity which we naturally believe ourselves to have. 'Matter,' as something behind physical phenomena, is a postulate of this sort. Between the postulated Matter and the postulated Thinker, the sheet of phenomena would then swing, some of them (the 'realities') pertaining more to the matter, others (the fictions, opinions, and errors) pertaining more to the Thinker. But who the Thinker would be, or how many distinct Thinkers we ought to suppose in the universe, would all be subjects for an ulterior metaphysical inquiry." So we have old and young, philosopher and psychologist James talking about his personal introspection at a particular time and place. Was there more? dmb continues: See, it's not so much that I am "reluctant to use the terms percept and perception as more precise substitutes for the fuzzier terms used by Pirsig", as you put it. I'm saying you can't rightly understanding radical empiricism in terms of psychology. [Krimel] You are seriously suggesting that a philosophy written by a psychologist can't be understood in terms of psychology. [dmb] I think you're latching on to the term "perception" so that you can do exactly that. [Krimel] You are afraid to use the terms James uses because I might bite you? [dmb] See, what happens is you're trying to understand a non-dualistic experience in terms of subject-object dualism. You're asserting SOM to oppose the rejection of SOM, which is like fighting chemotherapy with cancer. [Krimel] I thought we were trying to get at the distinction between perception and the cutting edge of reality. [dmb] Want more proof? Check out this excerpt from a recent (flakey new-age) book review: [Krimel] I snipped the quotes because they are all better displayed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciousness http://www.scimednet.org/pure-experience/ The Wiki quote was written by Bricklin. The first two chapters of his book are available through Google books. It on the same search page your other materials came from. Krimel said: But let me restate my original questions: Where is that quote Pirsig cites in Lila? Has he just confused his own notes on James with actual writing by James? Please note the recent brouhaha over Arlo's use of quotes. This seems far worse so I really would be grateful if you can find the actual quote. dmb says: It seems you must be very desperate to find fault. It's a scandal for Pirsig because YOU can't find the quote? C'mon, would you like to learn something or are you just here to play silly games? Seriously, Krimel. I haven't said much about the evidence provided to you here because I think you're capable of reading and thinking and drawing your own conclusions. Am I right to trust you that much? Do you see it? [Krimel] Pirsig says: "In his last unfinished work, Some Problems of Philosophy, James had condensed this description to a single sentence: 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing.'" I was interested in finding that quote because I have found Some Problems... helpful. It is available on line here: http://www.archive.org/stream/someproblemsphil00jameuoft#page/n7/mode/2up It is the 1916 edition so perhaps Pirsig was citing a later edition. I am particularly taken with statements like: "Sensation and thought in man are mingled, but they vary independently." "The great difference between percepts and concepts is that percepts are continuous and concepts are discrete." Or: "The perceptual flux as such, on the contrary, means nothing, and is but what it immediately is." "The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes." He does acknowledge that perception is a slightly higher level function than sensation and emotion. But these are whafting on the breeze like the "the sheet of phenomena" flapping between "Thinker" and "Matter". Or as Magnus might put it somewhere near the firmware and logic gates. It is hard to call someone "non-dual" when they chop the world into continuous/discrete, static/dynamic, percept/concept. Or see unity in the notion of many all at once. "Percepts and concepts interpenetrate and melt together, impregnate and fertilize each other. Neither, taken alone, knows reality in its completeness." But James is quite clear the concepts arise from and are secondary to percepts: "'The insuperability of sensation' would be a short expression of my thesis. To prove it, I must show: 1. That concepts are secondary formations, inadequate, and only ministerial; and 2. That they falsify as well as omit, and make the flux impossible to understand." Concepts flow inevitably from our perceptions and concepts are what we use to create a shared world. What I don't think out difference have much to do with psychology versus philosophy. As I hope I have made clear of the year I don't see much distinction between them. I think our differences are more along the line of Pirsig's classic/romantic or even more likely the concern that informs much of James' writing: the split between rationalist and empiricists. "As we survey the history of metaphysics we soon realize that two pretty distinct types of mind have filled it with their warfare. Let us call them the rationalist and the empiricist types of mind... Rationalists are the men of principles, empiricists the men of facts; but, since principles are universals, and facts are particulars, perhaps the best way of characterizing the two tendencies is to say that rationalist thinking proceeds most willingly by going from wholes to parts, while empiricist thinking proceeds by going from parts to wholes." These are styles of concept formation and in the end it is concepts that are always in dispute: "Rationalists prefer to deduce facts from principles. Empiricists prefer to explain principles as inductions from facts." "The author of this volume is weakly endowed on the rationalist side, and his book will show a strong leaning towards empiricism. The clash of the two ways of looking at things will be emphasized throughout the volume." My take is that you use his "radical empiricism" as an excuse to throw out the hard work of empirical research or rigorous thought. Your whole contention that James disavows a pre-existing "reality" is true enough on the conceptual level. But at the perceptual level less so. James take the side of empiricism: "But the philosopher, although he is unable as a finite being to compass more than a few passing moments of such experience, is yet able to extend his knowledge beyond such moments by the ideal symbol of the other moments. He thus commands vicariously innumerable perceptions that are out of range. But the concepts by which he does this, being thin extracts from perception, are always insufficient representatives thereof; and, although they yield wider information, must never be treated after the rationalistic fashion, as if they gave a deeper quality of truth. The deeper features of reality are found only in perceptual experience." BTW, Attaining some non-dual state of awareness sound great but so what? Abandoning all conception and freed from the chains of some separate reality... Zowie, sign me up? Wait! I think already I have a pill or a cream for that. Once again, tell me as what privileges this particular kind of awareness over others? Why should evidence of this alleged non-dual state be regarded as providing a higher quality or more reliable form of conception than any other? 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
