Hello everyone On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:50 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dan said to dmb: > What is a "concrete" experience? ... The acting agent seems independent from > the world as a thing experienced. ... The intellectual structures seem to > emerge from the (material) world; this is not what the MOQ says. > > dmb says: > Well, no. You're reading James as if he subscribed to subject-object > metaphysics but quite the opposite is true.
Dan: This is a tough one... James doesn't seem to subscribe to what RMP named subject/object metaphysics but like RMP he makes use of it: "If one were to make an evolutionary construction of how a lot of originally chaotic pure experience became gradually differentiated into an orderly inner and outer world, the whole theory would turn upon one's success in explaining how or why the quality of an experience, once active, could become less so, and, from being an energetic attribute in some cases, elsewhere lapse into the status of an inert or merely internal 'nature.' This would be the 'evolution' of the psychical from the bosom of the physical, in which the esthetic, moral and otherwise emotional experiences would represent a halfway stage." [Essays in Radical Empiricism http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Classic/empiricism.txt] Dan comments: Do you see what I am saying? Note particularly: This would be the 'evolution' of the psychical from the bosom of the physical. He is saying ideas (the psychical) evolve from matter (the bosom of the physical). This is not what the framework of the MOQ subscribes to, but rather the other way around. dmb: The central point of his pure experience theory is to oppose that. Dan: That is entirely possible. But he is not opposing it the same way that Robert Pirsig opposes it with his MOQ, at least not in my opinion. dmb: It's been a long time since I quoted from the end of chapter 29 and now seems like a good time. As Pirsig describes it, James's radical empiricism says... > "...subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience. Subjects > and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more > fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes > the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories. In this > basic flux of experience the distinctions of reflective thought, such as > those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter > have not yet emerged in the forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot > be called either physical or psychical. It logically proceeds this > distinction. > In his last unfinished work, Some Problems in Philosophy, James had condensed > this descriptions to a single sentence: 'There will always be a discrepancy > between concepts and reality, because the former are static and > discontinuous, while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had > chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of > the Metaphysics of Quality. > ... The metaphysics of quality says pure experience is value. Value is at the > very front of the empirical procession. ... It adds that this good is not a > social code or some intellectualized Hegellian absolute. It is direct > everyday experience. ...Through this identification of pure value with pure > experience, the metaphysics of quality paves the way for an enlarged way of > looking at experience which can resolve all sorts of anomalies that > traditional empiricism has not been able to cope with." (Lila 364-6) > > dmb: > This is the basis for my contention that when James is talking concrete > experience and abstract thought, he's basically talking about DQ and sq. As > you can see, it is Pirsig himself who thinks he and James are using the terms > in the same way. Dan: He says that James used the same words that Phaedrus used for the basic division of his metaphysics but I don't think he believes James is using the terms in the same way. dmb: Exactly the same terms, he says. Dan: Again, no. That isn't what he said. He said the same words. Words can and do have different meanings and I don't see that James meant dynamic in the same sense that Robert Pirsig means Dynamic Quality. Can we at least agree on that? dmb: I don't think Robert Pirsig adopts James's ideas or adds them to his own. It more like they both arrived at the same conclusions independently but WE can use James to further explore the meaning of the MOQ. Dan: Sure. But I doubt they both arrived at the same conclusions. RMP goes further than does James in formulating a metaphysics centered on value. dmb: This is going to be helpful because people have been writing about and thinking about James's work for a hundred years. > > So anyway, concrete experience is just the immediate flux of life, the basic > flux of experience, direct everyday experience, as described above. That is > the Dynamic reality, which is distinguished from secondary static concepts. > There are differences, of course, but in this respect, Pirsig tells us, they > are on the exact same page. Dan: Well, again, I think RMP has moved past James in ways that agree with James' work. James (for one thing) never postulated that reality is composed of value. He seemed to feel that experience HAD value but he didn't make the connection that experience IS value. So, yes, they might well be on the same page but RMP is further along in his thinking. Thank you, Dan 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
