dmb, I am saying if Dynamic Quality is undifferentiated, it cannot be about perceptions (smells, sounds, tastes, visions, and feelings) which are differentiated, which require a spacial-temporal framework; and which are dependent on human sense apparatus? Neither you nor the paper that you were unable to explain, addressed this issues.
Marsha On Jul 8, 2012, at 11:57 AM, david buchanan wrote: > > Marsh: > 1) If you were genuinely interested answers, you'd take the time to CAREFULLY > read the paper. > > 2) Since it is Pirsig's published work that tells us that James was saying > the same thing as the MOQ, your objection to James's thought has no merit at > all. > > 3) Your point (that direct perception can't be pure experience or DQ because > perceptions are differentiated) seems to rest entirely on simply denying what > the textual evidence repeatedly says. To add yet another, for example, how do > you suppose that Northrop's "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" could be > aesthetic without some kind of perception? How could Pirsig's "primary > empirical reality" be empirical without some kind of perception? Jumping off > hot stoves is going to involve some kind of perception, some kind of > phenomenal experience. I would have thought this was quite obviously derived > from the meaning of the terms employed, terms like "aesthetic" and > "experience" and "Quality" and "flux of life", etc.. I mean, > "undifferentiated" does not mean experience is a blank void or black empty > space. It just means that the situation has not been divided CONCEPTUALLY. > "Unverbalized sensation" and "undivided experience" are both descriptive > phrases that should give you a clear sense of what "undifferentiated" means. > > 4) This would be the third or fourth time in a row in which you asked a > question that was just supplied in the quote to which you're supposedly > responding. Do the explanations really demand further explanations? The > section seems pretty clear to me and it was selected specifically to answer > your question? Why is that not good enough? James and Pirsig are both denying > that "all thinking and experience involves concepts". They are both insisting > not only on the reality of pre-conceptual experience but also on its central > importance. "James instead argues that the phenomenal content of embodied > experience as experienced outstrips our capacity to conceptually or > linguistically articulate it. In other words, James insists that many of our > basic experiences harbor non-conceptual content." That is the sense in which > DQ or pure experience is undifferentiated, is undivided. It's all about the > difference between the conceptual and the non-conceptual. > > 5) I think good, solid answers have already been given - repeatedly. You > asked. I answered. Take it or leave it. Take it from somebody else. Read > Krueger's paper. Read Northrop, Kitaro, James or Dewey or any of the scholars > who write about any of them. ...But I'm done answering every question two or > three times in a row. Jeez. Don't you see how lazy and obnoxious that is? > > > > >> From: [email protected] >> Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 10:08:51 -0400 >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [MD] pure experience (DQ) >> >> >> >> dmb, >> >> I agree that direct perceptual (the particular) experience is more immediate >> than reflective conceptual (the generalized) experience, but direct >> perceptions still cannot be Dynamic Quality or pure experience, which is >> undifferentiated. That is my point. The paper you offer might reflect what >> James thought, but I am interested in how these are best handled in the MoQ, >> and if you cannot explain this I don't see the value to be gained by reading >> it. I also acknowledged that static (patterned) value represents all that >> human being's can know. But I still have a problem with connecting direct >> perceptional experience with Dynamic Quality as I explained. >> >> >> Marsha >> >> >> >> >> On Jul 8, 2012, at 9:13 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> Marsha asked: >>> 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. >>> >>> >>> dmb says: >>> If you're sincerely interested, there is a paper you might want to read. >>> http://queksiewkhoon.tripod.com/varieties_of_pure_experience_joel_w_krueger. >>> Until then, here is a piece that'll probably help: >>> >>> To begin simply, James was suspicious of the idea that conceptual or >>> propositional thought functions as the primitive—and thus >>> irreducible—interface between self and world. On this conceptualist or >>> "intellectualist" line, as James refers to it, all thinking and experience >>> involves concepts. No concepts, no experience. James instead argues that >>> the phenomenal content of embodied experience as experienced outstrips our >>> capacity to conceptually or linguistically articulate it. In other words, >>> James insists that many of our basic experiences harbor non-conceptual >>> content. That is, many of our experiences have a rich phenomenal content >>> that is too fine-grained and sensuously detailed to lend itself to an >>> exhaustive conceptual analysis. For example, we can have visual experiences >>> of colors and shapes of things for which we lack the relevant concepts (a >>> previously unfamiliar shade of magenta or a chiliagon). And this ability >>> holds for other sensory modalities as well. For our ability to describe or >>> report a wide-range of tastes and smells lags far behind our capacity to >>> actually have an experience of a nearly infinite spectrum of tastes and >>> smells. In other words, the deliverances of our senses continually run >>> ahead of both our descriptive vocabularies as well as our conceptual >>> abilities. Though James does not address the notion of non-conceptual >>> content as explicitly as many contemporary philosophers of mind—and >>> furthermore, it's not clear that he's entirely consistent on this point, as >>> I discuss below—James does continually insist that there is a truth to our >>> concrete experience of reality that conceptual analysis and the formal >>> truths of logic cannot explicate. Thus James is moved to write the >>> following passage, which (not surprisingly) caused considerable >>> consternation among many of his contemporary commentators: >>> I have finally found myself compelled to give up the logic, fairly, >>> squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, but >>> that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the essential >>> nature of reality. Reality, life, expedience, concreteness, immediacy, use >>> what words you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>> 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 >>> >>> 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
