On May 28, 2011, at 11:38 AM, david buchanan wrote:
> dmb says:
> Again, I'll remind you that you repeatedly cited an enthusiastic William
> James fan to dispute William James. The quotes you post as evidence for your
> notion of reification do not support that notion at all.
Marsha:
If the "enthusiastic William James fan" you neglect to name is Alan Wallace,
may I offer this quote to demonstrate that being a fan does not indicate
unconditional agreement. Please note the statement "James seems to have
fallen into the trap of reifying his own concept of a field of consciousness" :
"The asymmetry in James's view of mind and matter may be due in part to
his advocacy of a "field theory" of consciousness, in contrast to an "atomistic
theory," which he vigorously rejects. I would argue, however, that the nature
of consciousness does not intrinsically conform either to a field theory or an
atomistic theory. Rather, different kinds of conscious events become apparent
when inspected from the perspective of each of these different conceptual
frameworks. Using James's field theory, one may ascertain an individual,
discrete continuum of awareness; and using the atomic theory one may discern
within the stream of consciousness discrete moments of awareness and
individual, constituent mental factors of those moments. Thus, while certain
features of consciousness may be perceived only within the conceptual framework
of a field theory, others may be observed only in terms of an atomistic theory.
This complementarity is reminiscent of the relation between par
ticle and field theories of mass/energy in modern physics. The crucial point
here is that neither conceptual framework is inherent in the nature of pure
experience. James seems to have fallen into the trap of reifying his own
concept of a field of consciousness, and this may have prevented him from
determining, even to his own satisfaction, the way in which consciousness does
and does not exist.
"James did not present a practical means of transcending one's familiar
conceptual framework and entering into the state of pure experience. On the
contrary, he declared, "Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep,
drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the
literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what." Given his keen
interest in and appreciation for mystical experience, it is strange that he
apparently did not consider that advanced contemplatives may have gained access
to conceptually unmediated consciousness that would have a strong bearing on
his notion of pure experience."
Wallace, B. Alan, 'The Taboo of Subjectivity: Towards a New Science of
Consciousness',pp.114-115)
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