[MD] Another parallel

[david buchanan]

John said to dmb:
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. ... If you could say, Pre-experiential reality, I'd buy that.  The "something" that exists independent of perception. Ok.
dmb says:
According to radical empiricism, philosophers have no business talking about things that exist "independently of perception" or, as I prefer to put it, things not known in experience. While it might be possible that there are realities outside of experience, we can't know anything about that precisely because it's not known in experience. Pre-experiential reality that exists independently of perception is a pretty good description of what is usually meant by "objective" reality. It is said to exist whether there is anyone to perceive it or not. 



dmb said:
Reasoning, by contrast, is necessarily conceptual and intellectual.

John replied:
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.

dmb says:
I don't understand what you mean. I'm just trying to get across the idea that there is an important distinction between pre-intellectual and intellectual, between pre-conceptual and conceptual, between primary experience and secondary experience. I'm talking about the phases of experience. In that context, reason, intellect, conceptual categories all refer to the second phase and are contrasted with the first phase. In that context, I'd say the distinction between intellectual thought and conceptual thought is meaningless.  

John said:
Give me any empirical evidence for pre-experiential experience, and I'll shut up about it.  Till then, I'm a-wonderin'.

dmb says:
Since pre-conceptual experience IS the empirical evidence, I'll assume that you're asking for examples of the kind of experience we're talking about. Malcolm Gladwell is a popularizer of scholarly ideas and there are probably some good reasons to criticize his work, but his book "Blink; the power of thinking without thinking" will give you an idea what sort of thing I could be talking about here.
 pihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(book)

John said: 
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.

dmb says:

Right, the idea that concepts match reality is known as the "correspondence theory of truth". That theory says that truth occurs when your subjective idea correspond to the objective reality. Radical empiricism rejects that whole idea and instead subscribes to the pragmatic theory of truth. Instead of trying to make sure experience corresponds to reality, the radical empiricist says that experience IS reality because it is the only reality we can ever know. It says that our philosophical descriptions must include everything and anything that is experienced and that we must not posit anything that isn't known in experience. In that context, the discrepancy between concepts and reality is a claim about the distinction between primary experience and secondary experience, where the latter is conceptual and intellectual. They're both real and they're both experienced.

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

John said:

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.

dmb says:
I'd agree that there is no such thing as "pre-experiential experience". I'd even say that the phrase itself is sheer nonsense. Pre-intellectual experience, on the other hand, simply refers to "direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions." 



John said: 
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.

dmb says:
Yes, in the MOQ intellectual abstractions are static intellectual quality and are at the top of the static hierarchy. In the quote, this is what follows from Dynamic Quality. DQ or pre-intellectual experience is prior to that. That what "pre" means. I mean, to say that an experience is pre-intellectual  and to say that an experience is prior to intellectual abstraction is just two different ways of saying the same thing. These are just different terms to express the same idea. I've been using various terms to say the same thing so as to remove some of the ambiguity, to make sure you can see how I'm using the terms. 
But your "somebody has to lead" and your "stepping on each other's toes" comments concerns me because I'm just talking about the phases of experience. All this stuff is about what it is like to experience, is an examination of experience itself. This just isn't the sort of thing where one leads or can be led. It's not about who experiences these things before the other guy. It's about the sequence of events in your own experience. I mean, these are descriptions of what it's like from the inside of experience. Like I said, instead of hopeless trying to define this undefinable pre-conceptual experience, radical empiricism is a careful explanation as to WHY this direct experience cannot be defined.

John said:
Oh. Well then. I agree completely.  How can you define something that is self-contradictory?

dmb says:
No, that's not what the claim is at all. The inability to define this experience has nothing to do with contradictions. You can't define it because definitions follow it. It refers to that first phase of experience that is ahead of definitions, prior to definitions. We're talking about what happens in the blink of an eye, before you have time to apply any conceptual categories or assign any reasons, etc..

Does that help?


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