[MD] Food for Thought

[David M]

Hi Case/Ham

I think James is trying to get away from SOM
and the disembodied subject to see experience
as embedded in our bodies (biology) and in
society. Merleau-Ponty makes the same point
about experience in his Phenomenology of Perception,
and so does some guy called Pirsig with 4 levels of SQ.

David M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 4:03 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Food for Thought


> [Ham]
> Whether Case fully understands Pirsig's ontology or not, he has the right
> slant on William James, including the point that he was primarily a
> psychologist.  James' use of the word "essence" in the statement "breath
> ...is the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity
> known to them as consciousness" could just as well have been "basis",
> "premise" or "canard".  It was not a metaphysical allusion.  That comes
> later, when he says: "But thoughts in the concrete are made of the same
> stuff as things are."
>
> [Case]
> I doubt if James uses essence in the same way that you do. But I think his
> point is that thoughts are not supernatural acausal events.
>
> [Ham]
> Case is also right in "lopping off the TIT's" of Kant's transcendental
> idealism, whether Pirsig has effectively succeeded in doing this or not.
> The bottom line is that the "stuff" of reality is sensibility, not the
> essence of "things-in-themselves".  Reality is the sensibility of an
> undivided essence.  The confusion lies in equating absolute sensibility 
> with
> (individuated) consciousness or experience, which is being-aware -- a
> subject/object dichotomy.  Without a source of sensibility there can be
> neither being nor awareness, subject nor object.  The primary source is 
> the
> non-contradictory identity of both contingents, i.e., the potentiality of
> sensibility to actualize difference.
>
> [Case]
> James is rooting this process in the 'real' world of sensation and
> perception. He talks about what we experience and how we come to know. 
> This
> business about "absolute sensibility" and "undivided essence" would leave
> James in the same state it leaves most of us: scratching our heads.
>
>
>
> 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>