[MD] John Carl's Critique of Pure Experience: INST 03

[John Carl]

Kreuger]


For example, we can have visual experiences of colors and shapes of things
for which we lack the relevant concepts (a previously unfamiliar shade of
magenta or a chiliagon).


John]


"visual experience" is a concept.  A discretely, patterned unit of mental
cognition which is non-verbal, non-linguistic and thus non-intellectual.
Yup.  Happens to us all, all the time.  Reason and words are not
everything.  We know this.


Kreuger]


And this ability holds for other sensory modalities as well. For our ability
to describe or report a wide-range of tastes and smells lags far behind our
capacity to actually *have an experience of* a nearly infinite spectrum of
tastes and smells.


John]


Yup.  "Description" and "reporting" are verbal/social modalities that cannot
operate independent of language.  duh.  But where's the concrete?  If words
and intellection are so abstract, how much more the pre-abstracted reality
that we haven't even bothered to name and categorize?  Usually because we
don't really need a term for the color between magenta and chiliagon.   Not
because this color is meaningless, but because we have relatively less need
for this particular meaning.  It seems to be the wrong direction to look for
concrete.


Kreuger]



In other words, the deliverances of our senses continually run ahead of both
our descriptive vocabularies as well as our conceptual abilities.



John]


Ok.  If you're gonna define "descriptive vocabulary" separately from
"conceptual ability", in other words, concepts are something besides
language...  you're in real trouble.  The kind of trouble that comes when
the day is hot, the concrete is setting up and you realize your forms are
way out of square.  There is some sneaky shifting in logic going on here and
it really bugs me.


Kreuger]


Though James does not address the notion of non-conceptual content as
explicitly as many contemporary philosophers of mind—


John]


Ya think???


Kreuger]



and furthermore, it's not clear that he's entirely consistent on this
point,



John]


Well that's must be a convenient thing.  To be allowed a little
inconsistency in one's metaphysics....  I might give the old guy some fudge
room, but he's the one that wants CONCRETE.    You can't have concrete
without consistency.  Concrete is valued exactly FOR its consistency.  Even
though we all know in truth that there is no real consistency at certain
levels of being/consciousness, we use metaphor and analogys to get our truth
and share it, and when you pick concrete as your flag, you better salute it.



Even tho concrete makes a sucky flag.


Kreuger]


as I discuss below—James does continually insist that there is a truth to
our concrete experience of reality that conceptual analysis and the formal
truths of logic cannot explicate.


Thus James is moved to write the following passage, which (not surprisingly)
caused considerable consternation among many of his contemporary
commentators:


John]


And probably a few subsequent ones as well.


Kreuger]


I have finally found myself compelled to *give up the logic*, fairly,
squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, but
that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the essential
nature of reality. Reality, life, expedience, concreteness, immediacy, use
what words you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it.

John]


Well I'm not going to argue with somebody who basically gets around to the
right view.  Giving up the logic was probably a smart move at this point.
One reason I love reading Royce is that his logic is pure music to my ears.
He pretty much founded Harvard's symbolic logic schools, taught her founders
at least, and even his critics have admired his book of rules  as beyond and
better than the Principia Matematica.  So if you want philosophy, go to
Royce.  If you want psychology, James has some interestingly relevant
observations about philosopher's attachments.


Kreuger]



    However, to understand James's basic contention here, it is important to
note that he does not dismiss the instrumental utility of concepts. (This
point is one which a number of his critics failed to see).


John]


Well it's hard to see something with inconsistent definition.


Kreuger]


And James is certainly not suggesting that we disregard the formal truths of
logic altogether, of course. Rather, his insistence that logic can be "given
up" is an insistence that the problem at stake is not with concepts and
logical truths *per se*, but rather with the way that philosophers
(especially, once again, those endorsing an "intellectualist" view)
habitually *relate* to conceptual and/or logical analysis.


John]


It's a good point.  They relate through over-attachment.  James is helping
them with his insight.  He's not showing them the truth, he's showing them
the path they need to take in order to find the truth.   They are
intellectual academics whose whole worlds revolve around their intellectual
words, words, words.   James is their therapist.


Kreuger]


James claims that concepts are merely "map[s] which the mind frames out,"
and which enable us to organize and cope with a particular aspect of reality
making up the environment(s) with which we are concerned. He says elsewhere
that "the only meaning of essences is teleological, and that classification
and conceptions purely teleological weapons of the mind"


John]


"Weapons".   Yeah that sounds about right.  These guys loaded up the BIG
guns.  I like to think of mental tools rather than mental weapons, but
that's because I work with wood, not men.


Kreuger]


—retrospective reconstructions of the portion of reality that demands our
attention at any given moment. In this way, concepts have a clear
instrumental necessity. They are invaluable in both organizing our
experiences as well as enabling us to report, share, and discuss our
experiences with other language users. But concepts, James insists, do
*not*capture the irreducible essence of that which they purport to
describe.
There is always another aspect under which a thing can present itself,
another way that a thing can be investigated and categorized. Again,
concepts pick out whatever properties of a thing that "is so *important for
my interests* that in comparison with it I may neglect the rest."* *In this
way, concepts "characterize *us* more than they characterize the thing."


John]


We conceptualize ourselves, yeah, back to the ole Socratic  "Know thyself".
He's still using a lot of verbage to get this point across.


Kreuger]

*8*

    Problems arise, however, when the structures of our conceptual "maps"
are thought to provide an isomorphic blueprint of the inner structure of
reality itself. In Zen parlance, this presumption of isomorphism constitutes
a "clinging" to thoughts and concepts. As long as we recognize the
instrumental utility of concepts, which indicates both their necessity for
human life and communication, as well as their intrinsic limitation when it
comes to delivering over the reality of a life as experienced that forever
exceeds comprehensive articulation, we can use them effectively. But James
insists that when logic and concepts (both of which are a "static incomplete
abstraction" of a more dynamic reality feeding our phenomenal experience)
are taken to be a literal reflection of reality, our intelligence becomes
distorted.


John]


Yes, I agree.  We all agree.  What is missed fromt his dialogue is the other
side of the coin.  The "since I can't prove it that proves it doesn't
exist."  The fact that we no longer presume isomorphism, should not be
considered any sort of evidence that thought and/or  concept *never  *match
reality.


Kreuger]


The "static incomplete abstraction" is mistaken for the real, and the
vibrancy of phenomenal experience is crystallized into static categories
that fail to do justice to its lived richness. Thus James urges that "our
intelligence cannot wall itself up alive" in logic and conceptual analysis,
but must instead "at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that
engendered it."This universe is the universe of pure experience.


John]


I think we have some more work to do here.  We need to ask about this way of
getting to these admittedly important points, "What is good about it?"  And
even more relevantly, "How does this philosophy help the MoQ and is there a
better way?"  So many questions... to be cont.