Greetings, David --
As I understand it, Andre was re-phrasing the same idea we see in the
Richardson quote. "If we were to speak precisely, James says,
consciousness
is 'only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experiences IS KNOWN'."
See, this is an attack on the very notion that you can have a knower
without
a known, that knower and known are two different kinds of things.
But James (and Andre) are denying a distinction between consciousness
and content. The content IS the consciousness.
He is denying the notion that the subject is a distinct entity. In fact,
the
Richardson quote has been chopped off at a crucial point. After denying
that consciousness is an entity, the Richardson quote goes on to say,
"James argues that instead of dueling entities there is only process. 'I
mean
only to deny that the word (consciousness) stands for an entity, but to
insist
most emphatically that it does stand for a function'." ..."James's own
conclusion is that 'consciousness' is fictitious while thoughts in the
concrete
are fully real," he says.
Thanks for your clarification, but it makes no sense to me. The subject is
a "distinct entity" by virtue of
its individuated, proprietary consciousness. To say that consciousness
exists only as a "process" or "function" is to deny the Knower without which
the experienced world would be impossible. If consciousness is
"fictitious", how can the thoughts and precepts it holds be "fully real"?
Subject and object are the co-dependent twins of existential reality.
The idea that subjectivity/objectivity characterizes the duality of
existence
is what we call SOM. Subjects and objects are the dueling entities that
James and Pirsig are criticizing. The reasons for rejecting this dualism
are
philosophical, not because they think Descartes was an idiot or because
they're pushing some prior belief system.
Co-dependency of mind and matter does not necessitate a "duel" any more than
does the co-dependency of biology and physics in creating living organisms
or being and nothingness in constituting a relational universe. The
empirical fact is that existence is the divided, 'processive' mode of
Reality, not its essence. Thoughts, feelings, experiences, and judgments
are all differentiated, as are the objects and events that constitute
subjective knowledge. Neither the philosopher nor the scientist can
construct an "absolute monism" out of what is by nature divided. The
attempt to do so is fallacious. Moreover, in the absence of a relational
system, Value could not be realized.
In the essay titled "A World of Pure Experience", James says,
"The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience
will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower
and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its
object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and
thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension'
by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which
all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. ...
See, he's saying that SOM has created this fake problem of how to
get our subjective ideas to correspond with the objective reality that
they
supposedly represent. The various schools of philosophy have invented
all kinds of solutions, but they're all just as fake as the problem.
In other words, everybody has been operating with the assumptions of SOM
for a long time. 17th century philosophy has become our common sense
and so it's only natural that this duality of existence would seem so
clear to you.
This is what we're handed when we put on those cultural eye-glasses.
But philosophers have generally come to the conclusion that SOM is simply
incoherent. It's so futile that the neo-pragmatists have given up on truth
theories
and epistemology altogether. In any case, radical empiricism says that SOM
is NOT the duality of existence. It says that "subjects" and "objects" are
not
two different kinds of substances that make experience possible, that they
are
not the starting points of experience. Instead, they are secondary
concepts
derived from experience. We believe in these concepts because they work,
because they function in experience. And that's what James and Pirsig are
looking at, the ongoing process of experience. They both want to alter
the
attitudes of objectivity that results from SOM and instead "admit feelings
to
full standing ..as aspects of rationality".
As Richardson puts it, "The result of James's radical empiricism is to
move
the modern mind away from seventeenth-century Cartesian dualism and
toward what we might call process philosophy; to wean us away from falling
back on conceptions and to encourage us to trust our perceptions; to admit
feelings to full standing, along with ideas, as aspects of rationality."
So long as we are cognizant creatures, we will rationalize precepts from
what we experience. THIS is why relational experience "works", why Science
is an effective approach to problem-solving, and why we are free to
discriminate between the value of excellence and mediocrity. But all these
principles disappear when Reality is viewed from the absolute,
non-differentiated perspective. And only metaphysics can offer a solution
to the so-called "duality problem".
Best regards,
Ham
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