Who is David Scott? On Oct 4, 2011, at 12:17 PM, david buchanan wrote:
> > Matt said: > ... The problem might be best put in terms of the indeterminacy of > DQ/degeneracy thesis: if I want to always be following DQ as much as > possible, how do I know whether I'm dimly apprehending Dynamic Quality or > apprehending dimly with static patterns? ... The thesis suggests there's > going to be no answer, but what does it mean to say, then, that DQ is the > Good? Well, I guess just that it is a placeholder necessary to fully explain > the evolutionary paradigm of Deweyan evaluative experience. So that, > sometimes our experience of good is an implicit rejecting of past-evil, but > sometimes it's an implicit rejecting of now-good. And we won't know the > difference in our own experience until much later, for the experience of > dimness, we might say, is a necessary condition, but definitely not > sufficient. > > > > dmb says: > Okay, gents. Let me try this another way. We can see DQ from a slightly > different angle by looking at James's pure experience. David Scott lays it > out quite nicely and, quite helpfully, also frames the point in terms of > Buddhism. I'll add Pirsig's terms in brackets... > > David Scott said: > ...All of these techniques are intended to undermine what James calls the > tyranny of ‘intellectualism’, ‘conceptualization’ and ‘verbalization’.Yet > where did language [sq] come from? James considers that ‘when the reflective > intellect [sq]. . . in the flowing process [DQ] . . . distinguishing its > elements and parts, it gives them separate names[sq] . . . The flux of it > [DQ] no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these > salient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted [sq]; so that > experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and > prepositions and conjunctions’ (1912, pp. 292, 294). Or again, ‘the essence > of life is its continuously changing character [DQ]; but our concepts are all > discontinuous and fixed [sq], and the only mode of making them coincide with > life [DQ] is arbitrarily supposing positions of arrest therein [sq]. With > such arrests our concepts may be made congruent’. These categories are still > arbitrary or secondary since they ‘are not parts of reality, not real > positions taken by it, but suppositions rather, notes taken by ourselves, and > you can no more dig up the substance of reality with them than you can dip up > water with a net, however finely meshed’ (1909, p. 253). There are parallels > here to the Buddhist sense of inherent anitya, or ‘change’. Both the Ma > ̄dhyamika and Vijn ̃a ̄nava ̄da view language and concepts, as a secondary > vikalpyate, or ‘construct’ used by an individual’s ‘mind’ (manas). > Before or underneath this secondary conceptualisation and discrimination [sq] > comes what James dubs primary, or ‘pure’, experience [DQ]. As James explains, > ‘pure experience [DQ] is the name I give to the immediate flux of life [DQ] > which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual > categories’ [sq] (1912, p. 93). What is pure experience [DQ]? In a sense for > James it is not the right question to ask, for it is ‘an experience pure in > the literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what > [undifferentiated], though ready to be all sorts of whats’ (1912, p. 93). > Being pre-conceptual and pre-categorising, ‘experience’ in its original > immediacy [primary empirical reality] is not aware of itself. It simply is. > It is a ‘that’ rather than a ‘what’ object. Compare the classical Maha ̄ya > ̄na Buddhist focus on the tathata ̄ ‘thusness, suchness’ of things, amidst a > Buddhist ‘rejection’, particularly in the Madhyamika foundations of Maha ̄ya > ̄na, of ‘holding’ onto of any Absolutist positive or negative ‘thing-ness’ or > ‘what-ness’. James’ ‘pure experience’ [DQ] is like the Zen Buddhist sense of > a natural pre-conceptualising, pre-discriminatory setting [DQ], which Zen > traditionally calls one’s ‘original face’ [DQ] and which Suzuki calls > ‘no-mind’ [DQ]. The sacredness of the mundane in Zen also compares with > James’ view that ‘pure experience’ is nothing ‘but another name for feeling > or sensation’ [direct everyday experience] (1912, p. 94).James was at the > time concerned that his term ‘consciousness’ would be misunderstood. For ‘to > deny that [individual] ‘‘consciousness’’ exists seems so absurd on the face > of it—for undeniably ‘‘thoughts’’ do exist—that I fear some readers would > follow me no further. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to > deny that the word stands for an entity [Cartesian self], but to insist that > it does stand for a function’ (1912, p. 3). In turn, ‘function’ also echoes > the Buddhist core functionalist orientation.James acknowledges that: Although > for fluency’s sake I myself spoke earlier in this article of a stuff of pure > experience [DQ], I have now to say that there is no general stuff of which > experience at large is made, there are as many stuffs as there are ‘natures’ > in the thing experienced. If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is > made of, the answer is always the same. ‘It is made of that, of just what > appears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness or what > not.’ Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible natures and > save for time and space (and if you like for ‘being’) there appears no > universal element of which all things are made [It is neither physical nor > psychical, which are secondary concepts]. (1912, p. 26)It is this dynamic, > flowing, relational character [DQ] of ‘consciousness’ that seems closer > philosophically to Buddhism than to Hume (see Mathur 1978). James himself > distinguishes this Buddhist-like ‘shifting of consciousness’ from what he > sees as the blanket, perhaps static, ‘super consciousness’ of monistic Hindu > Veda ̄nta (1902, p. 491 n. 1). On this point James and Paul Carus enjoyed > courteous but ongoing disagreement. Carus veered towards the Veda ̄nta > monistic framework expounded by Viveka ̄nanda during the 1890s in America, > despite Carus’ and James’ otherwise common convergence and overlaps with > Buddhism’s approach to ethics and on the changing fluctuating nature of the > ‘soul’ or ‘self’ (see Bishop 1974). > > > > > 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 ___ 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
