[MD] Reductionism

[MarshaV]

THIS was a great post...  Thanks to both of you.


At 10:23 PM 7/2/2009, you wrote:

>Krimel said to dmb:
>
>... You adopt and claim that Pirsig adopts an 
>almost purely phenomenological reading of James. 
>This is the kind of reading that turns him into 
>one of the pure idealists he was so vehemently 
>opposed to. All you are doing is solving the SOM 
>problem by denying that anything outside of your 
>personal immediate experience has value or even 
>exists. This is not what James is saying at all. 
>You don't solve this kind of problem by 
>pretending half of it doesn't exist or by defining it away.
>
>dmb says:
>
>Well, at least you're admitting that SOM is more 
>than just a straw man. I guess that marks SOME 
>progress. Sadly, however, this is the 
>uncomprehending reply that I expected. Your 
>accusation above reveals a misunderstanding 
>which you repeat several times below. The idea 
>that I would be turning James into an idealist 
>only makes sense from within SOM itself. Since 
>I'm saying external, objective reality is just a 
>concept, just a product of reflection, you 
>figure, I must be advocating a reality composed 
>entirely of the other half, of subjectivity. 
> From within the assumptions of SOM, that would 
>look like idealism, if not solipsism. Ah, but of 
>course that's not what I'm saying at all because 
>the radical empiricist has already rejected SOM 
>and so the subjective self is just a product of 
>reflection too, just a concept derived from 
>experience every bit as much as the objective 
>side. There is an article about Nishida in the 
>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that happens 
>to make this point pretty well.
>"For Nishida, experience in its original form is 
>not the exercise of individuals equipped with 
>sensory and mental abilities who contact an 
>exterior world; rather it precedes the 
>differentiation into subject experiencing and 
>object experienced, and the individual is formed 
>out of it. “The moment of seeing a color or 
>hearing a sound” is prior not only to the 
>thought that the color or sound is the activity 
>of an external object or that one is sensing it, 
>but also to the judgment of what the color or 
>sound might be” (Nishida 1990, 3). “Pure 
>experience” names not only the basic form of 
>every sensuous and every intellectual experience 
>but also the fundamental form of reality, indeed 
>the “one and only reality” from which all 
>differentiated phenomena are to be understood. 
>Cognitive activities such as thinking or 
>judging, willing, and intellectual intuition are 
>all derivative forms of pure experience but 
>identical to it insofar as they are in act—when 
>thinking, willing, etc. are going on. The 
>experience of a running horse, for example, 
>underlies the judgment that the horse is 
>running, and the activity of judging is an 
>exercise of pure experience prior to a 
>subsequent judgment that “I am now judging.” 
>Objective phenomena likewise derive from pure 
>experience; when unified they are called 
>“nature,” while “spirit” names the activity of 
>unifying. Pure experience launches the dynamic 
>process of reality that differentiates into 
>subjective and objective phenomena on their way 
>to a higher unity, and the recapture of our 
>unitary foundation is what Nishida means by the 
>Good.Nishida would deny that his position is a 
>kind of idealism, either subjective or 
>transcendental, because no subjective mind, 
>human or divine, is the origin of what is taken 
>as reality, and no personified or ego-aware 
>spirit is its beginning or end. His notion of 
>pure experience clearly shows the influence of 
>William James, Ernst Mach, and others, but it 
>differs from their notions as well..."
>
>
>Krimel said:James isn't saying there is no 
>relationship between knower and known. He is 
>saying we have to be careful of an artificial one.
>
>dmb says:That's right. But it's not like he was 
>on the lookout for artificial conceptions to pop 
>up. He found one and identified it as a problem 
>throughout the history of philosophy. That artificial conception is SOM.
>I appreciate your attempt to bring Lambert into 
>it, even though he's a theological type, but for 
>the most part I don't see the relevance of the 
>quotes you picked. I suspect that's because 
>you're reading them just as you've been reading 
>me, from within SOM. Maybe you'll pick a 
>favorite or two and explain to me how it address 
>the issues or refutes something I said.
>
>Krimel said:
>
>All I can add is that you are doing nothing more 
>to solve the problem than inverting it. Instead 
>of saying that internal ideas are not "real" you 
>want to say that any external reality is not 
>"real". You are trading one extreme position for 
>another. I do not think this is what James is after.
>
>dmb says:
>That's another example of your reading things 
>from within SOM. "Pure experience cannot be 
>called either physical or psychical: it 
>logically precedes both." In other words, if 
>subjects and objects are derived from 
>experience, it would be logically impossible for 
>that experience to be the experience of a 
>subject. That would be a case of the subject 
>being derived from the experience of the 
>subject. A guy would have to be retarded to 
>think that makes sense. And yet that's what your 
>accusation amounts to. Sorry, but I've made this 
>point many, many times and it's really not that 
>complicated. Your obliviousness to the simple 
>logic of this is very frustrating.
>
>Krimel quoted from James's "Some Problems of Philosophy":
>
>"The pragmatic rule is that the meaning of a 
>concept may always be found, if not in some 
>sensible particular which it directly 
>designates, then in some particular difference 
>in the course of human experience which its 
>being true will make. Test every concept by the 
>question 'What sensible difference to anybody 
>will its truth make?' and you are in the best 
>possible position for understanding what it 
>means and for discussing its importance. If, 
>questioning whether a certain concept be true or 
>false, you can think of absolutely nothing that 
>would practically differ in the two cases, you 
>may assume that the alternative is meaningless 
>and that your concept is no distinct idea. If 
>two concepts lead you to infer the same 
>particular consequence, then you may assume that 
>they embody the same meaning under different names."
>
>dmb says:
>
>If memory serves this is what James said in 
>relation to the question of whether the man got 
>round the squirrel or not. His friends debated 
>it for a while and then hoped James would settle 
>the question for them. His reply was as you see 
>above. He puts it in careful Victorian language 
>but today we'd just say there is no practical 
>difference. It just doesn't matter. And that's 
>pretty much how I feel about this quote. How is it connected to our dispute?
>Lambert said: (and Krimel thinks this quote 
>"provides a bit of insight into the very discussion we are having here".)
>
>
>"One of the more difficult and pressing problems 
>for understanding James's radically empiricist 
>Weltanschauung as a whole concerns the terms
>"experience" and "experienced" themselves. What 
>he means by "experienced" in his statement 
>above, as well as by "experience" in his thesis 
>of pure experience, has been a subject of great 
>debate among his interpreters, with no real 
>consensus emerging. A number of different 
>interpretations have been suggested, ranging 
>from a variety of phenomenalist and panpsychist 
>interpretations, in which to be experienced 
>might mean to have an actual experiencer, or to 
>be experienced by something, or even to be 
>self-experiencing, to a rather moderate and 
>inclusive methodological interpretation, in 
>which "experienced" means to be experienceable 
>or describable in terms of experience."
>
>dmb says:
>WEll, if you're suggesting that there are 
>pragmatists who read James's and Dewey's radical 
>empiricism differently than I do, then I can 
>only say, "yea, I know". Maybe you recall the 
>explanations about the differences between 
>Neo-Pragmatism and Classical Pragmatism? Their 
>respective stances toward radical empiricism is 
>probably the single most important difference 
>between the two. This is the difference between 
>Rorty and Pirsig, between Matt Kundert and 
>myself, between Stuhr, Rosenthal, Hildebrand and 
>their counterparts on the neo-pragmatist side. 
>There is a paper published at robertpirsig.org 
>called "Clash of the Pragmatists" that explores 
>this. I wrote it about three years ago so it 
>would probably already embarrass me to re-read 
>it but it does show that I've been aware of the 
>lack of unity on this issue for a long time. But 
>then again, you're not a neo-pragmatist and you 
>certainly have not been making their case.
>
>Krimel said:
>
>I think you are arguing for an extreme 
>phenomenalist, panpsychist position. Obviously I 
>think its rubbish. But the inversion of the 
>problem as a whole from "thoughts" aren't real 
>to "things" aren't real is exactly your program. 
>I don't think an exclusive position either way 
>works at all and I really don't think that is what James is after.
>
>dmb says:
>
>There is another example of you reading me from 
>within SOM. From that perspective, a rejection 
>of objectivity has to be an acceptance of 
>subjectivity because those are the only choices. 
>But as I keep saying, the kind of radical 
>empiricist I'm talking about has already 
>rejected the idea that these are our only 
>choices. Also, I seriously doubt that you even 
>understand what "extreme phenomenalist, 
>panpsychist" means. I think you made that up 
>that meaningly drivel about five seconds after 
>you read the Lambert quote. You tend to do that 
>sort of bullshit. This, for example...
>
>Krimel said previously:
>
>As I understand it conjunction is generalization 
>and disjunction is discrimination. These are the 
>two great superpowers that give us pattern recognition.
>
>dmb tried to be polite about this little piece of stupidity:
>
>Conjunction junction, what's your function? It's 
>not about generalization so much as the 
>continuity in experience. ... James is saying 
>that experience is a continuous stream in which 
>a complex series of transitional moments 
>seemlessly takes us from thought to thing or from
>thing to thought. In other words, subject and 
>object are already unified in experience and...
>Krimel replied:Those were James' terms. I was 
>merely putting them into terms that make more 
>sense to me. Actually he thinks the problem of 
>traditional empiricists is... Kant's a prioris 
>blah blah ... Pirsig's talk about... blah blah 
>.... Kahneman and Tversky's ideas in prospect 
>theory which I have mentioned several times.
>
>dmb says:
>
>You were merely putting James's terms into terms 
>that you understand? Is that so? Please explain 
>to me how "the condition of being joined" is in 
>any way related to "generalization"? Obviously, 
>they aren't related at all and you were trying 
>to interpret James on the topic of "conjunctive" 
>relations in experience without even knowing 
>what the term means. I was trying to be polite 
>about it before but it's obvious that you're 
>bullshitting you're way through this whole 
>thing. Since James is accusing the traditional 
>empiricists of leaving out these "conjunctive" 
>experiences, where do you get the balls to 
>pretend that you understand this at all, let 
>alone better than anyone else? I just deleted a 
>few unnecessarily hostile comments but I do have 
>to say, at least, that this sort of thing doesn't exactly make you look good.
>
>
>Krimel quoted Lambert:
>
>"This understanding of the concrete and 
>frequently sensible character of experience 
>draws attention to a streak in James's thought 
>that often disturbs his modern-day readers - an 
>apparent romanticism concerning the relation of 
>thoughts to sensation. Some of his pithy remarks 
>to the contrary, James does not ultimately mean 
>simply to take up a romantic position against 
>thought with his thesis of pure experience, thus 
>preferring an un-"conscious," mystical state to 
>the abstract one that follows upon reflection. 
>Commenting in 1909 on his own essay "The 
>Function of Cognition," where percepts are 
>treated as the only realm of reality, James 
>writes that he "now treat[s] concepts as a 
>coordinate realm." Clearly, if percepts and 
>concepts are coordinate, there cannot be a 
>philosophical preference for the perceptual or 
>sensory order, whatever his rhetoric may suggest."
>
>dmb says:I wouldn't expect too much mysticism 
>from an academic theologian. That doesn't mean a 
>case can't be made. Lots of people have and when 
>the time is ripe, I'll make it to you. As to the 
>larger point here, percepts and concepts are 
>presented as coordinate in the essays I've been 
>quoting from and wasn't even aware that James 
>had previously held otherwise. So this couldn't 
>possibly be in contradiction to anything I've 
>said. I've been saying that subjects and objects 
>are concepts rather than existential realities, 
>but that doesn't make them unreal. They're real concepts.
>
>
>dmb said:
>That traditional conception [of experience] 
>entails the assumption that the external, 
>objective reality is coming into the subjective 
>perceiver of that reality through his senses.
>Krimel replied:
>
>And that is exactly what James says is happening.
>
>dmb says:
>That is the fourth example, in this single post, 
>of you reading things from within SOM. That is 
>exactly NOT what James is saying. You're reading 
>his solution, radical empiricism, as if he were 
>endorsing the problematic view he just replaced. 
>Like I said, it is a conception from within 
>subject-object philosophy and radical empiricism 
>sees that as a philosophical problem to be 
>overcome. Notice what he's saying here about the 
>instant field of the present. It is "as yet 
>undifferentiated into thought and thing".
>Krimel replied with quote and a comment:
>Yes and notice here what he says about that very 
>point: "Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma 
>from sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows, may be 
>assumed to have an experience pure in the 
>literal sense of a that which is not yet any 
>definite what, tho ready to be all sorts of 
>whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but 
>in respects that don't appear; changing 
>throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases 
>interpenetrate and no points, either of 
>distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure 
>experience in this state is simply but another name for feeling or sensation."
>I guess if you think "...new-born babes, or men 
>in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or 
>blows..." have the inside track to Nirvana but I 
>don't think that is what James is about.
>
>dmb says:
>
>James is only pointing out that "experience pure 
>in the literal sense" is an exceptional state of 
>mind. This qualification goes along quite nicely 
>with his idea that percepts and concepts are 
>coordinate or, in the MOQ's terms, that direct 
>everyday experience involves the constant 
>interplay between static quality and dynamic 
>quality. This also goes along quite nicely with 
>the idea that our thoughts shape what we see as 
>much as our sight shapes what we think. The 
>difference between babies and mystics is that 
>babies don't have yet have any static patterns 
>to abandoned but the idea is essentially about 
>recapturing that original undivided state. But 
>the mystic's goal is NOT to return to an 
>undeveloped state. Mystics go beyond their 
>static patterns of thought while babies have yet 
>to acquire them. The mystic transcends his 
>ego-identity while the baby doesn't yet have any 
>such thing. And extreme situations can bring 
>about the mystical experience spontaneously, 
>that is the say without the benefit of 
>meditation or the other techniques that have 
>been developed. The American Indian vision 
>quest, for example, was a relatively dangerous 
>and unreliable way to precipitate such an 
>experience. Later, because it was safer and more 
>reliable, they adopted the use of peyote. The 
>ancient mystery religions where soaked in 
>hallucinogens, for example. Some of today's most 
>admired artists suffered childhood illnesses 
>severe enough to have nearly killed them and 
>that experience had a lot to do with the 
>development of their creative intuition. Francis 
>Ford Coppola is one such case. And James himself 
>was quite impressed with the effects of nitrous 
>oxide in his own experience. It wasn't his 
>golden ticket to the Truth, but it made him 
>realize that other forms of consciousness were 
>available to us. In short, I do not take this 
>quote as a refutation of mysticism or pure 
>experience. It is a qualification worth 
>mentioning but it does not undo the larger 
>point, which is simply that pure experience is 
>occurs prior to the differentiations of 
>consciousness and is very much related to the 
>mystical state of undivided consciousness. To be 
>enlightened is to fully realize this lack of 
>division. To be an infant is to live in this 
>lack of division without "realizing" a damn thing. Big difference.
>
>Krimel said:
>
>First of all one could imagine a world with no 
>subjects and just objects which is materialism 
>or a world of just ideas and no objects. I don't 
>think you have to seek hard for quotes of mine 
>that suggest which way I lean. I won't even 
>bother searching to show which way you incline. 
>... I have also stated many times that my 
>inclination toward a pre-existing world external 
>is an act of faith. I don't think your clinging 
>to idealism is any less so. ... One is not more privileged than the other. ...
>
>dmb says:
>
>That is the fifth example of where you are 
>reading things from within SOM. By now, there's 
>no point in elaborating on why this is so wrong.
>
>Krimel said:
>Except that a world of "pure experience" is 
>impossible and not even desirable to acquire or 
>sustain unless you want to live as "...new-born 
>babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses or blows..."
>
>dmb says:
>
>We all begin as infants and so we all begin in a 
>world of pure experience so actually it is 
>impossible to avoid it. The trick is to realize 
>it in your own experience even as an adult. The 
>qualification that says normal consciousness is 
>never literally "pure", never literally and 
>completely devoid of static patterns, does not 
>mean that this categories is extinguished or 
>eliminated. It simply has to qualified by the 
>effects of the developmental process, in which 
>we lose sight of it even though we're operating 
>on its basis all the time. Ordinary words like 
>feeling, intuition, hunch, and yes even 
>sensation refer to the persistence of this basic 
>mode of consciousness even in adults.
>dmb said to Krimel:
>
>As wiki article says, the traditional 
>"empiricists unjustly try to reduce experience 
>to bare sensations, according to James" because 
>guys like Locke and Hume saw "experience in 
>terms of atom like patches of color and 
>soundwaves". That sounds very much like your 
>descriptions of the way energy is transduced by our sensory organs and brains.
>
>Krimel replied:
>
>
>That view of atomic experience was being 
>actively pursued by Wundt and even more 
>aggressively by his student Titchner. The 
>introspectionists where among the first 
>approaches taken in psychology and the first to 
>be utterly abandoned. Sensations result totally 
>from different kinds of energy, modes of 
>transduction and pathways of processing. 
>Sensations are received separately and combined 
>in the process of perception. Hearing and seeing 
>are two different kinds of experience. But they 
>do not constitute discrete elements of experience as they too are continuous.
>
>dmb says now:
>
>Huh? What does that have to do with the fact 
>that James criticized the reductionist 
>tendencies of the traditional empiricists? 
>Aren't you just demonstrating a more 
>contemporary version of the very same 
>reductionism? Yes, you are. And if lightwaves 
>and soundwaves aren't the forms of energy 
>transduced, then what kind of energy are you talking about?
>dmb said:
>I'm not saying your descriptions don't reflect 
>what's going on in that branch of science. I'm 
>just saying that this science is working within 
>the assumptions of SOM and within the 
>traditional empiricism. It's based on the very 
>assumptions that radical empiricism is attacking 
>and sees as a problem to be solved.
>
>Krimel replied:
>That is because you think it is important to 
>over turn all of science. Your SOM label is just 
>your way of feeling justified about refusing to 
>address the obvious. ... As I believe I have 
>said before, Dave, you are not making an 
>argument here you are making an excuse.
>
>dmb says:
>
>Really? SOM is just my label? We've regressed 
>back to that now? In the most recent exchanges I 
>showed you where SOM is in your own comments, in 
>traditional empiricism, in the philosophical 
>attacks of James, Pirsig, Dewey, in Stuhr's 
>explanation of Dewey, and in the work of 
>Nishida. For you to revert back to this old 
>tactic at this point only makes you look like a 
>belligerent jerk and like a guy whose just not 
>very smart. Obviously, you're the one with nothing but excuses.
>
>
>Krimel said:
>As I said if I HAD to choose between idealism 
>and materialism I wouldn't because I think we 
>need a bit of each. If you stuck a gun to my 
>head, I would pick materialism but even 
>materialism today is not "whirling particles" it is probability fields.
>
>dmb says:
>
>That is the sixth example of you reading things 
>from within SOM. Again, the debate between 
>idealism and materialism takes place within SOM 
>and does not make any sense in terms of radical empiricism.
>
>dmb said:
>Like cutting the lady up to find her beauty, it 
>just doesn't work. Anti-reductionism is just a 
>sophisticated form of the sentiment that says 
>the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.
>
>
>Krimel replied:
>One more time there is nothing wrong with asking 
>what conditions are necessary for a whole to exist at all.
>
>dmb says:
>
>Right, there is nothing wrong with asking about 
>the lower conditions that make the higher 
>conditions possible. Unfortunately, asking those 
>questions does not amount to reductionism and so 
>your reply does not even address the actual 
>charge. Obviously, you've failed to answer the 
>charge again because you don't understand it. 
>This incomprehension is quite baffling to me 
>because the explanations seem so obvious to me. 
>The one above is child's play and the one below 
>should be well within your reach as well but for 
>some reason this simple concept eludes you entirely.
>dmb said:
>It (anti-reductionism) simply asks that complex 
>phenomena be assessed in their own terms, on 
>their own level of complexity and that they not 
>be reduced to whirling particles. Such is the 
>case for experience. It is far more complex than 
>any of the physiological processes that can be 
>correlated to any given experience. To use one 
>of your old examples, the fact that we can 
>detect the kind of brain state that exists in a 
>person who is meditating simply doesn't mean 
>that the meditative state of consciousness IS a brain state.
>Krimel replied:
>
>The fact that meditators can be shown to have 
>similar patterns of brain activity is what 
>actually leads us to say that meditation is a 
>brain state. The same way that sleepers have a 
>similar brain states as to drunks and pill 
>poppers and people watching movies. Those it is 
>the common features that make them brain 
>states.   Those similarities may not account of 
>the felt experiences of individual meditators 
>but the similarity of their descriptions is what 
>contributes to calling this a "state" in the first place.
>
>dmb says:
>
>Oh, for Christ's sake! Do you think I'm 
>objecting to the word "state"? You can't really 
>be that stupid, can you? Reductionism is when 
>you reduce complex things like consciousness to 
>the biological processes. The objection, your 
>obliviousness, is EQUATING the brain's 
>functional state with the  experience had by the 
>meditators. May I remind you of a simple fact, 
>the people who observed and recorded the brain 
>states of the meditators had a completely 
>different experience than the meditators did. In 
>effect, they were observers of the experience 
>from outside the experience itself. They were 
>looking at physical objects, namely the 
>scientific instruments and the brains they were 
>hooked up to. If you asked them what the 
>meditative experience itself is like based on 
>their role in the experiment, they couldn't 
>possibly have a clue. And yet you see no problem 
>in equating the two, in saying that meditation 
>IS a brain state, which is a claim that such a 
>brain state and meditation are identical. That's 
>reductionism. Like I said, under normal 
>circumstances the brain state itself in not even 
>a part of the meditator's experience.
>Krimel replied:
> >From one point of view that state IS the 
> meditator's experience. But any experience can 
> be understood from many points of view.
>
>dmb says:
>
>The observer of the brain state is having an 
>experience too but, obviously, it is not the 
>experience of the meditative state. This is the 
>whole point of being an anti-reductionist. He 
>says it is inappropriate to confuse these two 
>things. Like I said, people have been able to 
>get at the point, purpose, effect and meaning of 
>the meditative states long before there was 
>anything like knowledge of what the brain is doing at the time.
>
>
>Krimel replied:
>Right and looking directly at what is going on 
>at the biological level helps account for what 
>makes those states significant evolutionarily. 
>The Dalai Lama for example thinks his meditators 
>are developing heightened compassion. EEG 
>recording show increased activity in the areas 
>of cortex previously associated with such 
>feelings. Learning to feel more open to others 
>is a healthy, socially desirable way to be, a 
>good skill to acquire. But how is this 
>philosophically or metaphysically significant?
>
>dmb say:
>
>Are you saying that compassion IS a brain state 
>now? Are you giving us a materialistic reduction of love now?
>
>
>Krimel said:
>I have never said that meditation can be 
>described purely or exclusively as a brain state ...
>
>
>dmb says:
>If you think you haven't said that, then you 
>don't even know what the meaning of "is" is. 
>Unbelievable! You just can't be that dumb. 
>There's no way. It has to be an act or a practical joke or something.
>
>By the way, trying to untangle your nonsense is 
>not fun. It's just a chore. It's a drag. I'd 
>welcome a real challenge but this ain't it. Even 
>with major help from that theologian, you're not making any sense.
>
>Over and out,dmb
>
>
>
>
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_____________

"He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has."
   (Friedrich von Schiller)