[MD] are theism and mysticism mutually exclusive notions?

[Case]

[gav]
no. we perceive wholes and create parts out of them.
the reverse view is SOM. undivided experience comes
first; then intellect divides it up. you can't know
you have seen a tree until after you have seen the
tree.

[Case]
I don't see how SOM vs MoQ plays much role in whether we see things as
wholes or parts. What if you see a forest before you see the tree? You would
never be able to see a tree because it would be part of a forest? Even if
you are talking about the whole undivided pre-intellectual business,
subjects and objects, parts and wholes are what emerge from the
pre-intellectual. In the pre-intellectual phase there are neither parts nor
wholes.

If you are really interested in how concepts are formed out of perceptions
you should be looking into child development.

[gav]
everything intellectual (ie utilising abstract
representation) is an analogy; some analogies are
really good and we call these true.

our senses - their putative operation, not the
phenomena themselves -  are 'concepts by postulation'
(northrop); they are dependent upon the particular
cultural mythos which informs the metaphysical
framework of the intellect; they are culturally
derived.

[Case]
There is no question about the importance of culture in shaping how we
organize our internal world. The degree of importance is the of course the
nature-nurture debate. The structure of our internal world is also heavily
influences by our biology.

[gav]
perception is pre-intellectual. the experience of
seeing the colour green is a different thing to the
intellectual descriptions of how the senses and
nervous system operate and interact in 4d space-time
(eg neurochemical, brainwaves etc).  this is the 'hard
problem of consciousness' (chalmers).  

[Case]
What Chalmers asks is how subjective experience can arise from objective
electrochemical activity of the nervous system. He does not phrase the
debate in terms likely to endear him to the MoQ. Searles answers this by
saying the consciousness is a property of complex nervous systems in the
same what that hardness is a property of collections of iron atoms.

In any event regardless of what philosophers say, in the long haul the
answers will come from neurophysiology. 

[gav]
 the phenomena of pre-intellectual perception, eg
'greenness' are, in northrops words, 'concepts by
intuition'. concepts by intuition are beyond doubt -
they are given directly; concepts by postulation are
relative and provisional.

 immediate experience is, necessarily, ontologically
prior to intellectualisation of it.

[Case]
And immediate experience in the absence of intellectualization is just
gibberish. To organize and make experience meaningful requires a process of
integration. This is what we do as organisms. The fact that this is socially
mediated means that each individual has the aid of her ancestor in doing the
job. Intuition may inspire and inform intellectualization, but with out the
later the former is meaningless. Intuitions are frequently wrong. A healthy
person uses both and rejoices in getting help from her friends.