[MD] Direct Experience

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham,
 
> DMB says::
> > Dewey talked about immediate experience in terms of "undergoing",
> > "suffering" and "enjoying" rather than terms like "consciousness".
> > We see this same distinction in the MOQ. Direct experience is called
> > pre-intellectual while cognitive knowledge of the sort we associate
> > with self conscious awareness is in the realm of static quality.

[Ham] 
> Yes, we do see an attempt to separate consciousness in Pirsig's 
> epistemology.  We also see "consciousness" avoided in the pragmatic
> theories 
> of James and Rorty.  In fact, the last century saw a deliberate effort to
> stigmatize the concept of "selfness" so as to bring subjectivity more in
> line with scientific objectivism.

Yes. It is highly amusing to witness someone denying the concept of self 
while simultaneously invoking "I." The logic of self-contradiction seems 
absent in postmodern thought, permitting  such nonsense as, "It's a fact 
there are no facts" and "There are no absolutes."    

The terms "consciousness," "awareness," "experience," "sense," etc. all 
presupposes a "knower" which in turn presupposes a knower of the knower,
ad infinitum. It doesn't take long to bump up against Godel's Theorem 
whereby no logical system can validate itself. So then we appeal to 
intuition, aesthetics and other such ineffable phenomena -- the realm of 
the mystic.

Pirsig describes mystic belief: 

"Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that path because 
when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to thought 
your thinking does not carry you toward that something. It carries you away 
from it. To define something is to subordinate it to a tangle of 
intellectual relationships. And when you do that you destroy real 
understanding.Thought is not a path to reality." (Lila, 5)

He goes on the say, " . . . a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a 
contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity."

At least he admits it. 

Best regards,  
Platt