[MD] Thought of the day

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 26 Jun 2010 at 15:26, david buchanan wrote:


Platt quoted from RefDesk.com

"My experience is what I agree to attend to." -- William James.   In other 
words, value is pre-experience. Now there's an idea worth further consideration 
-- the MOQ enhanced!


dmb says:

Enhanced? I think the MOQ already says what James is saying here. In the next 
sentence James says, "Only those items which I notice shape my mind - without 
selective interest, experience is utter chaos." (Principles of Psychology, 
1890). In other words, a thing that is not valued is not experienced. It 
remains unconscious, unnoticed. And here "experience" means what we notice, 
what we're consciously aware of and pay attention to. This is drawn from a much 
larger, richer, less conscious field of awareness. 

It's like the difference between a flood light and a spot light.  

[Platt}
"Chaos" is also part of "my experience." So what James is suggesting here is 
that that value precedes experience.

Just as Quality has Lila, Quality has experience. Experience is created by 
Quality. Quality comes first, the prime mover. 

"It isn't Lila that has quality; it's Quality that has Lila. Nothing can have 
Quality. To have something is to possess it, and to possess something is to 
dominate it. Nothing dominates Quality. If there's domination and possession 
involved, it's Quality that dominates and possesses Lila. She's created by it."
(Lila, 11)
	 	   		  
When you put Quality in front of everything else, including experience itself, 
you escape the S/O prison. The division is broken. You are freed from the 
separate-self sense. You cease to exist and reality is exposed.