dmb, How can Dynamic Quality or 'pure experience', which is undifferentiated, include perceptions which are differentiated? There is, after all, a difference between sensual experiences - smell, sound, taste, sight, and feel; percepts require a spacial-temporal framework in which to exist; and they are dependent on human sense apparatus? This excludes them from being consider Dynamic Quality, the undifferentiated. This represents my puzzlement for the past year? And this is why I have a problem with a solely preconceptual description of DQ, or pure experience. It seems to me that percepts are in the static (patterned) value arena and a more appropriate description of DQ would be pre-conceptual and pre-perceptual. Dynamic Quality cannot be experienced in any way recognizable by human beings.
Marsha On Jul 7, 2012, at 6:03 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Marsha said to dmb: > It sounds like you are suggesting that when you drop concepts, the adjectives > and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions, you get DQ? Is this correct? > Is this what is being designated as direct experience? Where are percepts, > the sensual stuff such as smell, taste, feel, sight, sound, in this > explanation? These are experiences, are they not? What does James say about > the sensual experiences? > > dmb says: > Again you are asking for an answer that was already supplied. (SEE QUOTES > BELOW) "Pure experience," James says, is "but another name for FEELING OR > SENSATION" and "its purity is only a relative term, meaning the proportional > amount of UNVERBALIZED SENSATION which it still embodies." > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- >> On Jul 7, 2012, at 5:26 PM, david buchanan wrote: >> >>> >>> Marsha asked: >>> >>> >>> Direct experience of what? >>> >>> >>> dmb says: >>> Like the man said, "experience pure in the literal sense ...is NOT YET ANY >>> DEFINITE WHAT, tho ready to be ALL SORTS of WHATs". There can be no WHATs >>> because whats are all secondary products of thought and not the starting >>> points of reality. There are not yet any whats because this immediate FLUX >>> of experience is dynamic is always "changing throughout" such that "no >>> points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught.". To have the >>> whats, you need to have distinctions and identities, which are static and >>> secondary products of reflection - as opposed to undivided experience. >>> As Pirsig and James both say together, "there must always be a discrepancy >>> between concepts and reality" because concepts "are static and >>> discontinuous" while the immediate flux of life is a "dynamic and flowing" >>> continuum. To put it another way, there will always be a discrepancy >>> between static concepts and dynamic reality, because static patterns are >>> stable and ordered but the ongoing flux of experience is ever-changing and >>> free of patterned habits or ordered structures. >>> >>> >>> -------------------------------------------------------------- >>> On Jul 7, 2012, at 3:43 PM, david buchanan wrote: >>> >>> “When Zen teachers introduce students to nirvana (which the MOQ translates >>> as the world of pure undifferentiated value) they do not do so with books >>> and thesis. They sit the students in a room until their clutter of >>> intellectual knowledge is abandoned (especially values judgments!) and the >>> pure vision of the newborn infant is regained” (McWatt 2004, 83). >>> >>> >>> "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 >>> that which is not yet any definite what, tho ready to be all sorts of >>> whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't >>> appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases >>> interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or ofidentity, can be >>> caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or >>> sensation. But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself >>> with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and >>> abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives >>> and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a relative >>> term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it >>> still embodies." - William James - Essays in Radical Empiricism. >>> >>> " 'There must 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." >>> >>> 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 > > 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
