Something has bothered me quite a bit for a long time, and I'm gonna fumble through an analogy of sitting on a hot stove in three different environments, in order to get at the conceptualization (of conceptualization) which bothers me. And then I'd like to discuss this thing "psychological nominalism" which recently popped up in my reading, as well as this list. Such congruent leadings should always be heeded, imo.
First, three hot stoves. We'll take as our "hot stove" your basic wood fired, kitchen stove. It's black, squat and normal. A perfect height for sitting and nothing shiny or distracting about it. Heated to standard temperature, we'll figure it at about 450-550 degrees. We're going to consider this hot stove in three different environments, a north-woods cabin, a deserted island and a normal kitchen like has been around for hundreds and thousands of years and we're going to compare experiential encounters with this hot stove in these three different ways. First, the normal hot stove experience involves a cook working in a kitchen, who is fully aware ahead of time of the stove's existence and temperature. He's a busy guy, got a chef's hot on his head which is full of thoughts about the dinner, the cooking and all the tasks involved. This first sitter most closely approximates Pirsig's analogy of "not thinking" when he sits on it. His distraction causes the accident and he quickly reacts to his stove-sitting experience because he's fully aware of the stove and his environment so there seems to be no time lag between the physical sensation and the physical reaction. But as I would like to show with my other examples, this is not because he's having a non-intellectual experience, it's because his intellect has already dealt with the existence of the stove ahead of time. He's probably done it once or twice before in his life, and the first conscious thought flitting through his head after he's leaped off is "oops" and he goes about his business with very little afterthought or reflection or emotional connection to this flitting experience. Like getting a bit of egg shell in the cake batter, it's just a normal "oops" in the kitchen, with no associative "aha" at all. Part of the process, is all. The second stove sitter, is found on a deserted island in a warm climate. He's walking along the beach, decides to rest for a minute and watch the waves, and what he thinks is a bunch of rocks, just right for sitting, is actually a hot stove amongst a bunch of rocks. Because his butt was expecting a certain amount of warmth, he doesn't realize at first that he's sitting on a hot stove and not a sun-warmed rock. Furthermore, in this time and place the hot stove is completely incongruous. He didn't put it there, he didn't light a fire in it, and there's nobody else on the island. It's appearance under his ass is about as unexpected an event as he could imagine. He's not going to react as fast, because he has no mental picture in his head to even deal with the experience and after he realizes he has sat on a hot stove, he's going to be frightened and bewildered and his heart is going to be pounding, his mind racing to come up with some explanation of how this stove got there and who lit it. He's going to be completely obsessed with this stove for days, if not months and years. He's going to wonder if he's going crazy, with nobody else around to even confirm it's existence, he's going to really wonder. If he's at all inclined toward supernaturalism, that's going to be the direction he's going to be thinking. Eventually, I could easily imagine such a hot stove experience to become a talisman or idol for him. The third hot stove experience will be found in a north-woods cabin. The owner of the cabin gets the fire going, and then goes for a walk after dark on a cold, frosty winter's night. He has a mishap, gets his bottom wet and frozen and stays out much longer than he expects and as he's trudging back to the cabin through the snow, each step a torture to his almost frozen legs and buttocks, his whole being and attention are gonna be focused on that hot stove. He's going to fantasize to himself how good it's going to feel to just go in and sit right down on that stove and when he finally gets there and seats himself, he's going to stay on it as long as he can stand it. As long as it takes to heat his frozen flesh and he's going to have the most positive emotional response to the hot stove of any hot stove sitter ever. So which guy had the most "pure" experience of the hot stove? I say they all experienced the stove in relation to a pre-existing conceptualization of their environment and their reactions and the meaning of their experience was not derived from the merely sensory reactions of stimulus response, but derived from a narrative of their existence and a mental context for their varied perceptions. 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
