Dan said to dmb:
I came across this in the SEP... it seems to contradict your statement that
pure experience is central to radical empiricism. Could you expand on your
thinking in that regard and how it differs from the article?: "James's “radical
empiricism” is distinct from his “pure experience” metaphysics. It is never
precisely defined in the Essays, and is best explicated by a passage from The
Meaning of Truth where James states that radical empiricism consists of a
postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion. The postulate is that “the
only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things
definable in terms drawn from experience,” the fact is that relations are just
as directly experienced as the things they relate, and the conclusion is that
“the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are
themselves parts of experience” (MT, 6–7)."
dmb says:
The relationship between pure experience and radical empiricism is very much
like the relationship between Dynamic Quality and the Metaphysics of Quality.
In both cases, the former is central to the latter. In both cases, direct
experience itself is distinct from the static concepts that are arranged around
it. The MOQ and radical empiricism are intellectual constructs and so they are
necessarily full of postulates, definitions, statements of fact, claims and
conclusions. But DQ or pure experience is neither static nor intellectual. Does
that make sense of the apparent contradiction? You see how DQ can be central to
the MOQ and distinct from the MOQ at the same time? So it is with pure
experience and radical empiricism.
The passage (above) from James's "Meaning of Truth" doesn't look like it's
doing much work but it actually strikes a devastating blow against
subject-object dualism and every kind of metaphysical fiction. This deceptively
simple move kills off the Cartesian subject and Royce's Absolute at the same
time.
Dan also said:
... Robert Pirsig clearly puts Dynamic Quality outside of any encyclopedia we
use to construct a metaphysical reality and if he and James are using the terms
in a synonymous way then pure experience would also lie outside of any
metaphysical sense of reality.
dmb says:
Yes, exactly. Pure Experience or DQ is not a metaphysical chess piece. It's the
primary empirical reality prior to conceptual sorting.
Dan said:
... I thought of that [jumping from the stove] when I was listening to the ZMM
podcast on the Partially Examined Life website and someone asked if an amoeba
has pre-intellectual awareness because it moves away from a drop of acid. I
would say an amoeba has biological awareness... it cannot formulate complex
meanings... it only reacts to its environment. The hot stove example shows how
experiences like pain and oaths come after the Dynamic moment of just knowing
some "thing" isn't right. So far as I know, an amoeba doesn't intellectually
formulate a notion of pain nor does it mutter oaths in reaction to the acid. So
if the intellect isn't there, how can there be a pre-intellectual awareness?
dmb says:
Right now there is an amoeba and a trillion other creatures that are getting
along just fine without words or concepts. Their experience is never
intellectual or even social and yet they must be aware in some sense. Rabbits
run from wolves on purpose but without reflection or deliberation. They're not
going to tell the tale later or think it over but surely they have some kind of
awareness and their little brains are capable of something like an intelligent
response. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to find food without becoming food
but staying alive takes some kind of smarts, some kind of awareness that is
less than intellectual awareness. Nested deep within our highly evolved brains,
we still have the brain of our reptilian ancestors and it seems quite easy to
believe that there are many layers of awareness still operating below the level
of self-conscious thought.
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
