[MD] Another parallel

[John Carl]

>
> 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.



Like black holes and quarks for instance?  I've never experienced either, so
I can't talk about them?

>
> 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.
>

Well its hard to keep definitions straight.  Intellectual thought might be
the abstracted layer but I envision conceptual thought as basically any old
thought at all.  I might not have figured out the reasons why the stove is
hot but I will form a concept of pain immediately.

The only "preconceptual experience" I can imagine is exactly the same as no
experience at all.  It's an experience waiting to happen.



> 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)
>


Sigh.  "Thinking without thinking" - is exactly the kind of thinking that
gives me a headache.  What is to be gained from such silliness?
Wait here while I click on your link...

The author describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": our
ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of
experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or
even better than—carefully planned and considered ones.

Ok that's completely different.  That's "thinking without overthinking"  It
is certainly NOT thinking without thinking.  Is this whole debate centered
around a tiny slice of time?



> 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.



But I'm saying there's no way to know that for sure either.  And usually the
best you're gonna get is that they're real close.  My assertion has more to
do with the unknowability of correspondence, on way or the other.




> 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's the only reality we can deal with, but to assume it is the whole of
reality is overreaching, in my uneducated opinion.




> 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)
>

And yet Quality itself is an intellectual abstraction.  Everything we say is
intellectual abstraction.  Why fight it?


>
> 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."
>


And here is exactly where I question the empirical evidence for this
assertion.  Can anyone show it to me?  Can you demonstrate it from
experience?   You say, "we must not posit anything that isn't known in
experience", and then you assert  "direct experience is independent of
intellect".  What's a guy to do with such a self-contradictory philosophy?
 "Known" is a form of intellectual abstraction, you know.



>
>
>
> 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.


Yes but unfortunately it seems to be leading you into more and more
contradiction.  "Pre" means before.  I get that.  What I don't get is the
way radical empiricism asserts such a thing when it relies on experience
alone for knowledge... and then goes out and slices off a whole whopping
chunk of reality that can't be proved or experienced or conceptualized or
realized... we just need it I guess to round out the philosophical question
of "Where does reality come from?"

Too much more of this and I'm goin' back to the back of the turtle.


>
> 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.


yeah me too.  I was talking about the dance in the phases of experience -
who's to navigate and who's to steer. No cause for concern.




> 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.
>

Well first off, why bother?  Descriptions of how to experience something
seem a little ridiculous, don't you think?  We all do it quite nicely
without much philosophical advice.


>
> 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..


Back to the ineffable time slicing again...


>
> Does that help?
>

Everything helps.

John







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