Krimel said:
Please, if you will, find that quote in "Some Problems..." It isn't in my
copy. In fact, search for it on the net and you will find all of the references
trace back to Pirsig not James.
dmb says:
James's can be tricky, especially the stuff published after his death. But one
scholar's footnote says that quote can be found on page 365 of the 1911
version, which must be the original version, I figure, because James died just
one year before that.
Krimel:
What I don't get is the difference between perceptual and pre-conceptual. Nor
do I see how you can deny that sensation and feelings (both fundamentally
biological processes) precede perception.
dmb says:
Pre-conceputal experience is broader than perception. It includes perception,
feelings, sensations but it's even broader than that. Part of the problem with
traditional empiricism (SOM) is that it was also known as sensory empiricism,
which is to say that empirical experience is whatever can be known through the
five senses. Radical empiricism goes beyond that limit. They say the empiricist
weren't being empirical enough and that it had been so limited for metaphysical
reasons, not empirical reasons. There are some very interesting implications to
way James focuses on the body in his psychology but I think you tend to misread
that part. I think you tend to focus on perception, sensation and feeling
because then James is talking about biological processes. And he is but I'm
suggesting you need to think about it in another way. I think you tend to
reduce his claims down to biological processes in a sort of atomistic way.
Nobody is denying that we have bodies or that these proce
sses occur, you see, but that's just not the point of what he's saying.
Remember that passage where he explains that pure experience is rarely pure in
the literal sense? Only infants, mystics and dudes suffering from head-trauma
can know that and for the rest of us pure experience is always mixed with
concepts. In that passage he also says that pure experience is something we can
act upon. It is not only a pre-conceptual form of awareness but a mode of
consciousness in which we can operate successfully. This would be a kind of
un-selfconscious, spontaneous action. On top of the easily measured physical
processes there would also be things like instinct, intuition and grooviness.
Think about the difference between pre-conceptual and conceptual in terms of
knowing HOW and knowing THAT. I like to use typing as an example because
everyone does it. If you're anything like me, somehow you don't "know" where
the keys are in the sense that you could pass a pop-quiz or give a speech on
it. And yet your fingers know what to do. How long would it take if you had to
think about every key-stroke? You'd never get much faster than you were the
first time. And yet, hopefully, the content of the sentences and paragraphs IS
something you know in that conceptual sense. You know THAT the MOQ is Robert
Pirsig's idea. You know HOW to type.
This is where the embodied nature of experience has interesting implications,
by the way. If all conceptual knowledge is derived from immediate experience
and immediate experience is an embodied affair involving perceptions sensations
instincts intuitions and feelings, then what does that say about the prospects
of trying to create artificial intelligence, which is by definition NOT so
embodied? That's what Dreyfus the Heideggerian tried to tell those guys back at
MIT. He makes a pretty big deal out of this difference too, between knowing-how
and knowing-that. Those two ways of knowing show up in many languages,
including German. I imagine this point was fairly obvious to Heidegger's
domestic audience. I've heard that the old Scottish distinction between wit and
ken gets at this difference too. Skill is its own kind of knowledge. It takes
experience and can't be gained by way of conceptual knowledge. Know-how is not
something you can pick up from a book, not even when it come
s to being a skilled thinker.
As far as denying that perception comes after sensation and feeling, I honestly
don't know what you're talking about. The thought never crossed my mind and I
have no idea what it's supposed mean. This happens a lot, almost every time in
fact. How about, from now on, anytime you ask about a claim, denial, statement
or whatever, you also include the actual claims, denial, or statement in
question. It seems like you're just making stuff up out of thin air, but if not
I'd certainly like to know where you think you see this stuff. This time, like
most times, I literally don't know what you are talking about and I don't
recognize it as anything I said or would say.
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