[MD] Another parallel

[John Carl]

Well here goes.  Dave kindly offers me a matrix for my discontent... and be
sympathetic as I dive in and swim in these troubled waters.
The way I see it - or rather, What Makes Sense to Me So Far...

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 3:12 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>  It's probably not as strange as it sounds. Here "the central reality" he
> refers to is pure experience, otherwise known as pre-conceptual experience
> or pre-intellectual experience.


 Pure experience is a myth.  Pre-conceptual experience  or pre-intellectual
"experience" are self-contradicting terms.  That which is not conceptualized
is not experienced.  Period.  But conceptualization is a lot more broad than
language.  Is painting a language?  Yet concepts are transmitted by great
art, often ahead of the intellectualized lingual description to follow.

If you could say, Pre-experiential reality, I'd buy that.  The "something"
that exists independent of perception. Ok.



> Reasoning, by contrast, is necessarily conceptual and intellectual.


If you insist on your "necessarily", I'll offer you an "or" and take away
your "and".  Some kinds of reasoning are not intellectual, but all reasoning
is conceptual.  Caveat being, again, unless you are restricting all "reason"
to SOM.  This is a whole 'nother  ball of wax to get into, but when I made
the OS analogy with the hardware and the software, if the analogy fits,
there is no experiencer if there is no OS (reason) loaded.  Just to make the
disk drives read, just to weigh input - it's all form and function of REASON
: the Operating System for humanity.  Can't just throw it out willy nilly
cuz Bob says so.  I'm a pragmatist too, see.  Give me any empirical evidence
for pre-experiential experience, and I'll shut up about it.  Till then, I'm
a-wonderin'.



> The central reality is what you know prior to any reasoning. That's why it
> can't be understood "by reasoning of any kind". This is the basic idea
> behind Pirsig's claim that there is always a discrepancy between concepts
> and reality.


yeah, problem with that one too.  What is your proof?  Where is the
evidence?  Since it can't be proven that concepts match reality, can it
really be proven that they do not?  I don't think so.  Thus your (his)
"always" is too strong and misplaced.  Maybe concepts don't match reality.
 It's hard to tell.  You can't really.  That is probably the only provable
or demonstrable fact - the unprovableness of the proposition one way OR the
other.

But wait!  There's more!  It occurs to me that concepts are reality too.

The law of gravity - what a concept!  Does my conception of the concept of
gravity contain discrepancy?  Maybe, but is this discrepancy fixable and
perfectable?  I'd say yes and I'd say you'd have a hard time proving
different.




> This is the basic idea behind the claim that a metaphysics (reasoning minds
> want to know) of Quality (the central reality of the MOQ) is a contradiction
> in terms, a logical absurdity.



Perhaps a logical absurdity within the context of a certain kind of
reasoning - the kind with a genetic defect. The kind we call SOM.   But is
that the only OS option out there?  (spoken as a long time apple fiend who
shudders over your hotmail blurbs)



> This is also the basic idea behind Pirsig's claim that "Quality doesn't
> have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of
> definition.



Definition is definitely an intellectual concept.  Definition is
foundational to the Church of Reason.  But that "Reason", is exactly as
unique as Euclidean Geometry and when you say "reason - as in the system we
currently use" you are talking differently than I about ALL reasoning - mind
- Operating System.  There is no pre-experiential experience.  I don't know
how to say it any cleaner than that.



> Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
> abstractions." (Lila, chapter 5)



That almost makes sense, but why "independent of"?  Are not some
intellectual abstractions of very high Quality?  And if so, and if by
intention, then you cannot say they are independent of Quality.  They are
based upon the very thing.  "Prior to" makes sense to me because somebody
has to lead in this crazy dance.  Or we'd all be stepping on each other's
toes.





> This is what the radical empiricists are all saying. Instead of hopelessly
> trying to define this undefinable experience, radical empiricism is a
> careful, reasonable explanation as to WHY this direct experience cannot be
> defined.


Oh.

Well then.

I agree completely.  How can you define something that is
self-contradictory?  That's my careful reasonable explanation anyway.



> To put it as simply as possible, reality is what you experience before you
> have a chance to think about it.




Sigh.

To put it as simply as possible ... I'll think about.



John the thinking






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-- 
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There are differing interpretations of Reality, some are just better than
others, that's all.
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