D. Harding said to All:
Why does Dan not see what I'm saying? ...We have had an ongoing discussion
about the MOQ for a long time now and our differences *appear* to have come
down to what 'experience' is. Dan insists that 'experience' is DQ and
everything else after that - is not 'experience'. I have said to him time
and again that experience includes *both* DQ and sq. ...But the trouble is -
if all you're interested in talking about is DQ - then why are you on a
philosophical discussion board? Like Marsha, the place for Dan isn't a
philosophical discussion group. It's a Zen retreat…Zen Master Dan wrote: "You
say we experience static quality. NO!!!! Not in the MOQ!"
dmb says:
I haven't really followed the Harding-Glover debates - but I don't see how
this particular point is even debatable. It must be that you have different
ideas about what the operative terms mean, exactly.
If static quality is conceptual, to say that we don't experience static quality
is to say that we don't experience concepts. But that's absurd because one
cannot say anything without experiencing concepts, without using words and
ideas. It's a performative contradiction wherein you're indeed doing the very
thing you are denying. It would be like saying, "we do not experience words or
concepts." I seriously doubt that Dan means to say anything so absurd.
What we want to agree about is the difference between concepts (sq) and
immediate, preconceptual experience (DQ). Yes, of course, in the usual sense of
the word concepts (static pattens) are known in "experience". That's what we
are exchanging and dealing with right now, obviously. But concepts (sq) are not
the same as preconceptual experience (DQ). That's exactly WHY it makes sense to
call it "PRE-conceptual"; to distinguish it from concepts and conceptual
understanding. This is not just true in Pirsig's view, but also with the other
radical empiricists like James and Dewey.
“In beginning to understand his view, it cannot be overemphasized that Dewey is
not using the word ‘experience’ in its conventional sense," John Stuhr
explains. "For Dewey, experience is not to be understood in terms of the
experiencing subject, or as the interaction of a subject and object that exist
separate from their interaction. Instead, Dewey’s view is radically empirical”
wherein “experience is an activity in which subject and object are unified and
constituted as partial features and relations within this ongoing, unanalyzed
unity” (PCAP 437).
This is a nice parallel to Pirsig's warnings about being careful with the term
"experience" because it's almost always conceived in terms of subjects and
objects. Stuhr is warning the reader that Dewey is using the term quite
differently. Where Pirsig talks about the cutting edge of undivided,
pre-intellectual experience, Dewey is talking about the "ongoing, unanalyzed
unity". This is what James calls the immediate flux of life, pure experience, a
dynamic continuity, which sounds very much like Northrop's undifferentiated
continuum. See a common concept behind all these various terms? That's the kind
of experience we're talking about, a unconventional use of the term used to
distinguish a pre-verbal immediacy from reflective thought.
And this is important for overcoming SOM precisely because it takes subjects
and objects as the cause of experience rather than a product of reflection,
rather than concepts which has been derived from experience. Our radical
empiricist are correcting a conceptual error, one known as "reification" As
Stuhr puts it, “the error of materialists and idealists alike” is “the error of
conferring existential status upon the products of reflection” This is a matter
of treating our “products of reflection” as if they were ontological realities
instead of parts of a man-made conceptual scheme.
This attack on subjects and objects is really why we want clarify the
distinction between concepts (sq) and pre-intellectual experience (DQ). The
point is to show how subjects and objects are just static concepts rather than
the basic starting points of reality, to distinguish the primary empirical
reality from the ways we conceptualize it. And BOTH of these elements are
necessary....
“The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims
that all LEGITIMATE KNOWLEDGE arises from the senses or by THINKING about what
the senses provided. Most empiricists deny that validity of any knowledge
gained through imagination, authority tradition, or purely theoretical
reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics
as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the
values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and
that in the past they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not
empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical
assumption that all THE UNIVERSE IS COMPOSED OF SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS and
anything that can’t be classified as a subject or an object isn’t real. There
is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. Its just an assumption”
(LILA 99).
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